Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi, K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 435

262
TATTVĀRTHA SŪTRA
is quite possible to envisage that some being is deprived of life at the hands of an advocate of non-violence through mistake or ignorance. So violence of this description-is it or is it not covered under the defilement designated violence ?
(3) Often it so happens that one commited to non-violence seeks to save some one from a danger or to provide him with a pleasure or convenience but that the result is just the oppositethat is to say, the person sought to be helped happens to lose his very life. Now such violence taking place under conditions like these—is it or is it not covered under the defilement designated violence ?
When such questions are posed then an endeavour to answer them results in a deeper consideration bestowed on the nature of violence and non-violence and in a further extension of the meaning of the terms concerned. To deprive a being of its life-at the most, to cause pain to a being—that was the meaning of violence uptil now; similarly, not to deprive a being of its life-at the most, not to cause pain to a being—that was the meaning of non-violence uptil now. But the theoreticians of nonviolence now entered into subtleties and instead declared that a mere deprivation of life or a mere causing of pain must not necessarily be treated as a cause of defilement designated violence; thus besides the act of deprivation of life or of causing of pain what has to be further investigated is as to what was the mental feeling that actuated the agent concerned—whence along it being possible to decide whether the act of violence in question was or was not a case of defilement. The mental feeling to be looked for in this connection is made up of the various impulses of attachment and aversion as also carelessness-a totality for which the technical designation is pramāda or negligence. When deprivation of life or causing of pain results from an evil or petty mental feeling of this sort then alone is it a case of violence and such violence alone is of the form of defilement. On the other hand, deprivation of life or causing of pain taking place in the absence of the mental feeling in question might well be called violence on account of its outward appearance but is not a case