Words For Violence In Seniors Of Jaina Canon

Author(s): Colette Caillat
Publisher: Colette Caillat

Page 7

Words for violence in the "Seniors" of the Jaina Canon
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aggressive actions himself, not to cause others to do so, nor to let them do so: n'eva sayam eehim kāehim dandam samārabhejjā, n'ev' annehim eehim käehim dandam samārambhāvejjā, n'ev' anne eehim kāehim dandam samārabhante vi samanujānejjā.38 It is also threefold in that it involves thought, speech and deed:
no tesim ārabhe dandam manasā vayasa kāyasā c'eva.39
2. (-)atipāta
In Dasav IV the aforesaid pledge is presented, on the one hand, as the consequence of the teachings concerning the (six classes of) jīva-nikāyas,40 on the other, as the general introduction to the extant text of the five "great vows". More precisely, though n'eva ... dandam samārambheijā can have a general bearing, the phrase seems to introduce more specifically the first mahāvrata, viz. "the abstention from injuring any (living) being", padhame, bhante, mahavvae: pāņaivāyāo veramanam.41 In Dasav, the vow further runs thus: “O my master, I renounce all injury against any being 1.7. I (shall myself] not injure any living being, nor cause it to be injured by others, nor allow others who injure it, to do so".42 Whatever the expanded formula, the initial sentence of the Jaina mahavvaya is very similar to the wording of the first "training precept" taught in the Buddhist Pa canon:
pāņâtipātā veramaņi-sikkhāpadam samādiyāmi (Khp II 1),
"I undertake the training precept of abstinence" from "killing breathing things":43
The Pa - Amg parallellism would tend to show that the association of MIA pāna, "a breathing, living being", with the action noun Pa atipāta, Amg aivāya is usual, and probably old, although in Sk prāņâtipāta appears not to be frequent.44
The corresponding verbal phrase is not rare in Amg. It occurs, for instance, in the prohibition expressed in Utt 8.9 = JAS 217,