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TATTVĀRTHA SŪTRA
manas, speech and body-in virtuous activities that are its opposite; formulation to this effect too follows as a matter of course. Though refrainment from a defilement is here explicitly described as vrata, yet it does include within itself the aspect of positive virtuous activity. Hence it has to be understood that vrata is not simply of the form of inactivity.
Question : There is a well-known vrata that goes by the name of rātribhojanaviramaņa or refrainment from eating during night-time. Why has that not been mentioned in the aphorism?
Answer : Since long a separate vrata has gained currency under the name rātribhojanaviramana but as a matter of fact that is not a fundamental vrata; it rather is a sort of necessary vrata that is implied by a fundamental vrata. So many others are such vratas and still more than can be conceived of. But what is sought to be offered in the present context is an account of just the fundamental vratas. Derivative vratas implied by the fundamental ones are certainly covered by a broader account of the fundamental ones. And rātribhojanaviramaņa is merely one of the numerous vratas that are implied by the vrata of the form of nonviolence.
Question : Keeping in view the destruction of living beings that is occasioned on account of the non-visibility obtaining during darkness as also keeping in view the numerous types of injury that are occasioned when an earthen lamp is lighted rātribhojanaviramaņa turns out to be a part and parcel of the
ata of the form of non-violence. But what is the difference between the night-time eating and day-time eating in the case of a cold country where there is no darkness nor occasion for an injury due to the lighting of an earthen lamp or in the case of a place where electric light is available ?
Answer: Keeping in view the countries that are predominantly hot and keeping in view the obviously visible violence that obtains in an arrangement involving the old type earthen lamps etc. the night-time eating is said to occasion more violence than the daytime eating. When this is admitted and at
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