Vivagsuyam

Author(s): Madhusudan Modi
Publisher: Gurjar Granth Ratna Karyalay

Page 12

were the weapons and the treatment used-much more cruel and barbarous even than the weapons and treatment described in the third lecture and other foregoing lectures too. All these customs presuppose pre-civilization days when the laws and customs of the people were quite wild, cruel and barbarous, Such heinous actions have, however, their bitter fruits and their doers have to suffer equally cruel pangs in return as the example of Nandivaddhana shows. The evil fruits of the greed of kingdom etc. even at the cost of one's father's life have also been emphasized.
In the seventh lecture, the evil fruits of eating flesh and prescribing it to others even for medicine have been further emphasized. We also get the knowledge that the superstitious custom of propitiating certain deities by women for getting an issue ( preferrably a son ), which was so devoutly followed by them in former days and which is extant even to-day in almost all parts of India, existed in very ancient times and that its germs may be said to have been in existence in India even before the composition a of the Jain Agamas (i.e. roughly even before the 4th or the 5th century B. C. ).
The eighth lecture does not give us any other new information but it further emphasizes the evil