Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 165

Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekānta for Contemporary Life
on his own funeral pyre. Though an extraordinarily stoical sacrifice in Greek eyes, this was a decidedly careless move for one dedicated to avoiding casual insecticide. Evidently the Persian winter had induced a chill, if not pneumonia, and Calanus had decided it was better to die than be an encumbrance. No one, not even Alexander can dissuade him from his purpose. He strode to his cremation at the head of an enormous procession and reclined upon the pyre with complete indifference. This composure he maintained even as the flames
frazzled his flesh. [Keay, pp. 76-77] This out-of-context association with Jainism (for which no evidence is provided) with an appeal of an eyewitness account creates a new genre of orientalism. It denigrates and distorts Jainism at the same time especially for those who are not likely be familiar with the tradition. Even a basic familiarity with the core tenets of Jainism would show that nudity--which is only practiced by the Digambaras--is not related to the vow of nonviolence (ahimsā), but to the vow of nonattachment (aparigraha). Furthermore, fire (agni kāya) under Jainism is considered as one of the six forms in which the Jiva reside. Therefore, self-immolation by fire will be unacceptable to a Jain as it violates the cardinal principle of nonviolence.
Stein too, is more concerned with what might appear as strange and exotic in Jainism rather than with the discussion of its core principles. Nearly three pages are devoted to the issues pertaining to female salvation, where the discussion of female biology and sexual orientations becomes a preoccupation with the author (Stein, pp. 70-73). This concern for the extraneous and strange is apparent from the following.
Both sides [referring to Svetāmbara and Digambara) recognized that in addition to the three bodily sexual forms, male female and hermaphrodite, each form could have sexual feelings more usual in one of the other forms. Thus, they acknowledged the existence of not only homosexuality, but lesbianism and bisexuality, and did so without the usual anathematizing of traditional religions. In fact, the Digambara argued that scriptural evidence that might be taken to mean that women were eligible for nirvana without having first been reborn as
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