Jainism its distinctive features and their impact on our com

JAINISM: ITS DISTINCTIVE FEATURES AND THEIR IMPACT ON OUR COMPOSITE CULTURE

The researches of many devoted savants, both West­ern and East­ern, have estab­lished beyond any doubt that Jain­ism is a very, very old tra­di­tion. It is now gen­er­ally rec­og­nized that Mahavira is not the orig­i­nal founder, but only a great reformer who induced fresh blood into the already exist­ing body of Jain­ism by his work of orga­niz­ing and ren­o­vat­ing the Jaina insti­tu­tions. Prior to him. there was the great Parshva; even he was not the founder of Jain­ism. Rishabha of the hoary past was the first pro­mul­ga­tor and founder of the Jaina tra­di­tion. He is unan­i­mously held by both the Jaina and the Brah­man tra­di­tions to have existed in very early times. Thus the root of Jain­ism go very deep into our his­tory and Jain­ism undoubt­edly is an indige­nous sys­tem which was preva­lent in our country-at least in entire north India-even before the advent of the Vedic Aryans to the Pun­jab or Brahmavarta.

It is one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and inspir­ing tasks for a thinker to fol­low the majes­tic course of Vedic Aryanism com­ing into con­tact with the indige­nous cur­rents flow­ing in our coun­try even before its rise here and min­gling with them, being influ­enced by them and emerg­ing, after ages of dynamic assim­i­la­tion, as he won­der­ful com­pos­ite cul­ture, Bharatiya sam­skriti, which is even now a very mush live and day-to-day prac­ticed tra­di­tion amidst one-fifth of mankind inhab­it­ing our coun­try. If we take up the two most pre­dom­i­nant cur­rents in this stream of Bharatiya sam­skriti, the Brah­man­i­cal and the Jaina, they seem to be dis­tin­guish­able even now (as Jain­ism has a very con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing in our coun­try) as Ganga andYamuna min­gling their different-hued water into one com­pos­ite river. We shall try to sketch, nec­es­sar­ily in out­line, how Jain­ism has influ­enced the Vedic-Brahmanic tra­di­tion and, thereby, con­tributed to our com­pos­ite Bharatiya cul­ture. Before we embark on his, we shall very briefly note the most salient fea­tures of Jain­ism.

Jain­ism is gen­er­ally clubbed along with Bud­dhism under shra­manasam­pra­daya. This does not bring out its essen­tial nature in entirety. From times immemo­r­ial, it is exclu­sively termed nir­grantha sam­pra­daya. This appel­la­tion brings out the fun­da­men­tals of Jain­ism. Of all tra­di­tions, Jain­ism emphat­i­cally lays stress on the nivrutti atti­tude towards life in this world.

The basic nivrutti stand-point char­ac­ter­iz­ing Jain­ism is laid as the foun­da­tion on which the entire Jaina struc­ture of its salient fea­ture is raised up sys­tem­at­i­cally and homo­ge­neously. Tapas or the sus­tained mor­ti­fi­ca­tion and con­trol over the body as related with the Jiva is elab­o­rated and insisted on in the Jaina can­nons. Even the harsh and rig­or­ous fea­tures of tapas are stressed Upavasatha and sallekhsna and Brah­macharya have been the dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of Jain­ism. Detailed instruc­tions regard­ing the sev­eral steps to be gone through in these processes are all neatly and thor­oughly laid down in the Jaina can­nons. Even dur­ing the times of Alexan­der, the Mace­don­ian king, we have very many instances of Jaina yatis or tapasvis. Prob­a­bly the order of yatis or sam­nya­sis is indige­nous to Jaina tradition.

Ahimsa has been the sheet-anchor of Jain­ism. No where else in the other tra­di­tions has this basic virtue so sci­en­tif­i­cally, scrupu­lously and thor­oughly inte­grated with the main doc­trine. Jain­ism is the only tra­di­tion which has con­sis­tently made this tenet soak into the very vitals of its teach­ings and prac­tices. The strict veg­e­tar­i­an­ism that is enforced and the injunc­tion to tak­ing food before dusk in the evening show how elab­o­rately and prac­ti­cally Ahimsa has been made to enter into the day-to-day lives of its votaries. The sin­gu­lar uncom­pro­mis­ing on Ahimsa is the spe­cial and exclu­sive fea­ture of Jain­ism.

The eth­i­cal code of Jain­ism is a most beau­ti­ful blend of achara and vichara (con­duct and reflec­tion). Almost all the mem­bers of the usual group of virtues adum­brated regard­ing con­duct or achara (like sayta, Ahimsa, brah­macharya, asteya, apari­graha) owe their immense impor­tance mainly to Jaina tra­di­tion. Jain­ism tack­les the incul­ca­tion of all these virtues in its votaries through a very wise nd prac­ti­cal hier­ar­chi­cal scale of anu-vartas, maha-vratas, etc. On the side of reflec­tion or vichara, it is Jain­ism which has stressed right from its very begin­ning tattvach­in­tana. Prob­a­bly, it was Jain­ism which orig­i­nally insti­tuted the order of yati-munis wholly devoted to tatva-chintana to the exclu­sion of all other activ­i­ties. It is due to this insis­tence on vichara or tattvach­in­tana in Jain­ism that we find that it is Jainas who have been almost the sole orig­i­na­tors in lit­er­ary com­po­si­tions in most of our lan­guages. Espe­cially is this so in Kan­nada, the lan­guage of Kar­nataka; with a Jaina-yuga or Jaina-period. More­over, we have a very cred­itable and pleas­ing prac­tice amidst the Jainas to encour­age pro­duc­tion and prop­a­ga­tion of lit­er­a­ture through lib­eral grants of land and MONEY: on tattvach­in­tana. Jaina-dharma, a com­pendium or a fairly detailed man­ual on Jain­ism (a pio­neer and laud­able pub­li­ca­tion in 1952) by Annaraya Miraji has seen the light of day owing to shastra-dana of very many Jaina men and women. There have been great and sub­tly to very many chap­ters in the his­tory of Indian phi­los­o­phy. Men­tion may be made here of the dis­tinc­tive and able elab­o­ra­tion of the doc­trine of Karma in Jaina metaphysics.

Such seem to be the salient fea­tures of Jain­ism as a dis­tinct tra­di­tion stretch­ing its roots into the dim past of our country’s his­tory. We shall now turn to note how Jain­ism, through its dis­tinc­tive fea­tures, has con­tributed to the for­ma­tion of Bhar­tiya sam­skriti through its influ­ence and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the other ele­ments equally and simul­ta­ne­ously present therein.

The typ­i­cal Jaina nivrutti atti­tude to life, exem­pli­fied in nir­grantha sam­pra­daya, has been very largely respon­si­ble for sober­ing down and mod­i­fy­ing the Vedic-Brahmanic pravrutti atti­tude. Sam­sara or the cycle of births and deaths, con­strued as essen­tially detestable and hence, to be got rid of, owes most prob­a­bly its roots to Jaina influ­ence. Pravrutti to be indulged in only with an eye to facil­i­tate nivrutti was prob­a­bly the first com­pro­mise effected by the impact of Jain­ism. Later, as the sec­ond and last stage, the Gita con­cep­tion of nishkama–Karma atti­tude was evolved out of the orig­i­nal naive, pravrutti atti­tude of the Vedic peo­ple. In both these stages, Jain­ism must have played a very sig­nif­i­cant part.

Attach­ment of Jain­ism to its tenet of Ahimsa and thor­ough prac­tice and prop­a­ga­tion thereof, must have had a tremen­dous influ­ence on the Vedic-Brahmanic cult of ani­mal sac­ri­fices and prac­tice of tak­ing non­veg­e­tar­ian food. By its immense faith, Jain­ism slowly and steadily cor­roded into the bl**dy prac­tices of the Vedic peo­ple and changed them over tri­umphantly into the com­mon pre­vail­ing veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and the almost com­plete aban­don­ment of the ani­mal sac­ri­fice. This sig­nif­i­cant change in the Vedic-Brahmanic prac­tices and reform thereby is the most telling tes­ti­mo­nial to the role of Jain­ism in the evo­lu­tion and devel­op­ment of Bharatiya samskriti.

Our peo­ple dur­ing the Vedic-Brahmanic period were mainly engrossed in rit­u­als; they were not mush attracted towards spec­u­la­tion about the peren­nial prob­lems of life and the uni­verse. The recur­rent Atmavidya of later Upan­ishadic times was yet to be born and evolved, at least in its con­spic­u­ous sin­gu­lar aspect. Jain­ism seems to have turned the tide of the order of rit­u­als into spec­u­la­tive chan­nels of Atmavidya; it is unde­ni­able that it must have played a major part in this process of the shift of empha­sis on spec­u­la­tion. This sur­mise is sup­ported by the fact that it is per­sons like Janaka, etc.-who most prob­a­bly belonged to or at least were influ­enced largely by nir­grantha sampradaya-who were the first ini­tia­tors of the Vedic Karmakanda peo­ple into the secret doc­trines of the Atman. The very strik­ing fea­ture of Jain­ism in stress­ing vichara or tattva-chintana nat­u­rally was the very fit­ting instru­ment in forg­ing the spec­u­la­tive slant in the Vedic peo­ple. This is the legacy that Jain­ism has left to all sub­se­quent devel­op­ment of our culture.

The con­sis­tently and elab­o­rately sys­tem­atized code of ethics-comprising the aan­tara (the inter­nal) and the bahya (the outer) aspects– built up by the Jaina tra­di­tion could not but per­co­late into the Vedic Brah­manic core surely and sub­tly. Espe­cially the Yoga sys­tem seems to have been greatly influ­enced by Jain­ism. It is no won­der that these strands have been woven over into the tex­ture of Bharatiya sam­skriti that we have inher­ited. The dis­tinct order of sam­nya­sis or Bharatiya sam­skriti that we have inher­ited. The dis­tinct order of sam­nya­sis or yati-munis, lead­ing a rig­or­ous and pure life based on celibacy and wholly devot­ing them­selves to tattva-chintana, and Jain­ism since time immemo­r­ial. The Vedic peo­ple mostly had rishis who lived their ordi­nary lives of house-holders devoted to teach­ing Vedic lore. Nec­es­sar­ily, the Jaina order of sam­nysasis, with its elab­o­rate and rig­or­ous rules of con­duct and orga­ni­za­tion, strongly appealed to our peo­ple in the Vedic period by its thor­ough­ness and use­ful­ness. Hence, we find that the order of sam­nya­sis, together with def­i­nite reli­gious insti­tu­tions, became incor­po­rated and thus was evolved and devel­oped the def­i­nite func­tion­ing limb of our tra­di­tion. This also is one of the great­est con­tri­bu­tions that must have been, to a great extent, made by Jain­ism to our com­pos­ite culture.

We have pitched upon the essen­tial fea­tures of Bharatiya sam­skriti and sin­gling out the dis­tinct ele­ments of Jaina tra­di­tion, which admit­tedly stretches into the dimmest past of our country’s his­tory and, more­over, is undoubt­edly indige­nous, have tried to trace the pat­terns of influ­ence and con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mon stream that has taken rise, being swollen to what it is by many trib­u­taries flow­ing their waters into it over all the ages gone by. Nat­u­rally and nec­es­sar­ily, ours has been a line of expo­si­tion largely sum­mary and sug­ges­tive. But, suf­fi­cient reflec­tion, it is hoped, is offered to point to the unchange­able and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion of Jain­ism, along with other strands, in the evo­lu­tion and devel­op­ment of our com­pos­ite culture.