Jaina Law Bhadrabahu Samhita

SR No.: 011057
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Total Pages: 146
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 5 MB

Page 103

APPENDIX B.
87
Logic. Whatever does not follow from or is inconsistent with the above four doctrines, cannot be the law of Jainas. And if the analysis of the rules of law actually administered by our Court as governig Hindus is carried deep enough, it would be found that at least a few principles of these rules are irreconcilably opposed to Jaina Law. For example, the rules relating to adoption. A son is needed by a Hindu to save his soul from the tortures of hell: ga (hell), whence the name (son, one who helps in crossing the hell). Among Jainas man alone is responsible for his actions; and once performed, these actions (Karmas) must bear fruit, and no one can intervene to deflect the incidence of this fruition. Thus the object of adoption cannot be to get a son to help one in crossing hell. Bhadrabahu reverts to this aspect of sonfulness in Slokas 7, 8 and 9 of his Samhita.
In connection with this, I cannot refrain from quoting from Mayne's classical treatise on Hindu Law and Usage:
"In Western and Northern India, the differences between the written and the unwritten Law were too palpable to be passed over. Accordingly, in many important cases in Boraodaile's Reports, we find that the Court did not merely ask the opinion of the Pandits, but took the evidence of the heads of the castes concerned as to their actual usage. The collections of laws and customs of the Hindu Castes made by Mr. Steele under the orders of Government, was another step in the same direction. It is probable that the laxity, which has been remarked as the characteristic of Hindu law in the Bombay Presidencey, would be found equally to exist in many other districts, if the Courts had taken the trouble to look for it. In quite recent times the Courts of the N.-W. Provinces and of the Punjab have acted on the same principles of taking nothing for granted. The result has been the discovery that, while the actual usages existing in these districts are