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 130

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APPENDIX B.
moot-principles of it." The present is a case in point. The Hindus and the Jainas have an essentially different outlook on their life in this world and in the next. For the Hindu, the world is God-created, God-governed ; and Karmas, only a rule of nature laid down by this God. For the Jainas the world is self-existent, uncreated, eternal; and the Law of Karma merely the inevitable and absolutely indispensable law of cause and effect which governs both the domains of matter and spirit. Religious intermediation is repugnant to the Jaina concepation of the Universe. On the other hand, it is the glorious breath of Hindu spirituality, where there is a God to be propitiated, to be prayed to, and to be looked up to. To consider a lower level of thought and practice, the Hindu follows his dead in their postmortem condition and provides for their comforts in the World of the dead by sacrifices and rites performed in the world of the living. The Pindadana is the soul of the las of Hindu inheritance. There the Jainas part company with their Hindu brethren. The dead take their own destiny with them, and the living cannot affect the course of that destiny. The Rig Veda, Hindu prays to the God of fire to give him song, (Rig Veda M. 7, S. 4, 10); he is born burdened with a debt to the manes, which is discharged only by the birth of a son ; hence the unlimited jubilation on the birth of the first son (Taittiriya Samhita, VI 3, 10, 5); for him the world of men is conquered only by a son and not by other work (Satapatha Brahmana 14, 4, 3, 24 25.) So Manu (IX 106) tells us: “On the birth of the first son, a man is freed from the debts to the manes; that (son), therefore, is worthy (to receive) the whole estate." Over against this great, spiritual and mundane indisponsibility of the son for Hinda Law, there is the rigid and unemotional doctrine of Jaina Law. The sage Bhadrabahu is surprised at these statements of Hindu Law. He says: "By