India, Cont.

The other method of salvation, the way of the self-conquerors (Jaina), had heroes to spare. If we follow Joseph Campbell's enviable Masks of God, Oriental Mythology, we find such tantalizing (from a Buddhist point of view) Jain savior-figures as Rishabhanatha (Lord Bull) who "enjoyed as a young prince the pleasures of the court" only to "renounce the world and give himself up to the practice of austerities" and achieve "illumination beneath a banyan tree in the park." Other saviors assisted the Jains in "reaching the other shore" of salvation and in attaining Nirvana. There was Lord Parshva, (eighth century B.C.), another Kshatriya prince who left a life of luxury at the age of 28 to pursue the self-conquering path and who, while experiencing perfection for the first time, was assailed by demons, darkness, cyclones, etc., but nevertheless remained "absolutely unmoved." Thousands, including Parshva's royal family and the wife he had abandoned, were converted to his Way as he preached the fourfold discipline that would lead all out of sorrow to the safety of the distant shore.

Disquietingly familiar as all of this is to us, it was doubtless refreshingly new to the intelligent folk of northeast India in the eighth century, B.C.

The Jain's gospel must surely have seemed vehicularly sound to many upwardly mobile members of society for, according to the Jains, there were only two castes: householders and monks. For householders, the basic rules of conduct forbade gambling, lying, stealing, harming living things, consuming alcohol or other intoxicants, and extra-marital sexual activity. In addition, householders were expected to refrain from accumulating excessive property and possessions and to support the monks, the former requirement being a fortuitous solution to the latter. Monks were further required to abjure all domestic or social relationships including, of course, those of a sexual nature. For monks, absolute solitude was essential to the pursuit of perfection.

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