Ahiṃsā paramo dharmah–Nonviolence is the highest dharma.
Animals play a prominent role in the metaphysics and ethics of Jainism. The first section of this exploration of the place of animals in the Jaina religious tradition explains the philosophical attitude taken toward animals in Jainism, after which it discusses the hierarchy of life forms as found in primary Jaina texts such as the Ācārāṅga Sūtra, the Tattvārtha Sūtra, and some of the later narrative literature. The second section investigates the symbology of animals in Jainism, with special reference to the identification of several Jaina Ṭīrthaṅkaras, or religious leaders, with specific animals. The third section will discuss the Jaina tradition of establishing and maintaining animal shelters (pinjrapoles).
Animals in the Jaina Cosmos
According to Jainism, 8,400,000 different species of life forms exist.1 These beings are part of a beginningless round of birth, life, death, and rebirth. Each living being houses a life force, or jīva, that occupies and enlivens the host environment. When the body dies, the jīva seeks out a new site depending upon the proclivities of karma generated and accrued during the previous lifetime. An animal that has acted virtuously may improve its prospects for return as a higher life form. If the animal has been vicious, then it will probably descend in the cosmic order, either to a lower animal form or to the level of a micro-organism (nigoda), an elemental body dwelling in the earth; it may even return in liquid form, or in fire or air.
The taxonomy of Jainism places life forms in a ranked order starting with those beings that possess only touch, the foundational sense capacity that defines the presence of life. These include earth, water, fire, and air bodies; micro-organisms; and plants. The next highest order introduces the sense of taste; worms, leeches, oysters, and snails occupy this phylum. Third-order life forms add the sense of smell; here are to be found most insects and spiders. Fourth-order beings are sighted. These include butter-flies, flies, and bees. The fifth level introduces hearing. Birds, reptiles, and mammals dwell in this realm.2
Jaina cosmology consists of a storied universe in the shape of a female figure. The earthly realm or middleworld (manuṣya-loka) consists of three continents and two oceans. The animals listed above, including humans, can be found here. Additionally, depending upon their actions, animals may be reborn in one of eight heavens or seven hells. If animals perform auspicious deeds they might be reborn in heaven.
In two remarkable stories, Jaini cites instances where animals perform deeds that guarantee themselves an elevated status. Two cobras, Dharaṇendra and Padmāvatī, save the life of Pārśvanatha, the twenty-third great Jaina Tīrthaṅkara. They are soon after burned to death by non-Jainas conducting a fire ritual. However, because of their good deeds, they are reborn in the heavenly abode of the Yakṣas and even today are worshipped as guardian deities.
The second story pertains to a prior birth of Mahāvīra, the twenty-fourth and most recent Tīrthankara, who lived around 500 BCE. In this birth, the soul that would later become Mahāvīra was born as a lion. Two Jaina monks, who happened to notice that this lion seemed receptive to Jaina teachings, “instructed him in the value of kindness and admonished him to refrain from killing.”3 The lion was so deeply affected by their lecture that he renounced hunting and killing for food and eventually starved to death. He was reborn in heaven, and later became Mahāvīra.
Similarly, though more rare, Jaina lore includes stories of animals going to hell for their misdeeds. As P. S. Jaini has noted, citing the Tattvārthasūtra, “birds can be born no lower than the third hell, quadrupeds not below the fourth, and snakes not below the fifth; only fish (and human males) are able to be born in the seventh hell.”4
These stories underscore the firm belief that animals act as moral agents, that they can choose between right and wrong, and that their actions will result in consequences both immediately and in terms of future births. This has led Professor Jaini to conclude that “what most clearly distinguishes them [animals] from the denizens of hell and the gods is the fact that, like humans, they are able to assume the religious vows. … This similarity with humans may partly explain the penchant of Indians–and particularly Jainas–to consider all life as inviolable. While this is not the same as exalting animals as holy beings, as some Hindus have done, it has prompted many Indians to renounce all violence toward lesser beings and recognize the sacredness of all forms of life.”5 Because of the Jaina view of the interchangeability of life forms and because of their unique cosmological view that sees all live forms possessing five senses as hierarchically equal, Jainism establishes a truly unprecedented philosophical foundation for compassionate behavior toward animals.
However, not all the stories told about animals highlight noble qualities. The Jainas also employ a pointed dialectic to show how negative behavior results in corresponding punishment. In some instances, such stories tell of how human folly and moral shortcomings lead to disaster and disarray. In other instances, animals, following the instincts of their particular species, enmire themselves deeper and deeper in the morass of samsāra, moving from one wretched animal form to another. In the story of Yaśodhara, a former king and queen become a sequence of animals, as will be explained. However, these animals lead rather ordinary lives and follow the sometimes repugnant instincts associated with their particular birth forms. Rather than providing an inspirational tale about superior moral accomplishments, this story, like many in the Jaina story tradition, underscores the difficulty inherent in a life not formed by spiritual insight and discipline.
The story of Yaśodhara first appears in Haribhadra’s Samarāiccakahā, an eighth-century Prakrit collection of popular Jaina tales. It was retold in Hariṣeṇa’s Bṛhatkāthakośa, a Sanskrit text written in 931, and later in Somadeva’s Yaśatilaka. In this story, King Yaśodhara discovers his beloved principal wife committing adultery. She then poisons Yaśodhara and his mother, Candramatī, while they sacrifice a rooster made of flour to the local goddess. He is reborn as a peacock and his mother is reborn as a dog. Both end up back in the court as pets of Yaśodhara’s son, Yaśomati, who is now king. One day the peacock remembers his former life as king and again sees his former wife making love to the same man. The peacock tries to kill them both, but they wound him and get away. The dog (his former mother) sees the hurting peacock and kills it. King Yaśomati, annoyed that his dice game has been disturbed, hits the dog (his former grandmother) and kills it.
Yaśodhara is then born as a mongoose to a blind female and a lame male, who are unable to care for him. He survives by eating snakes. His mother, reborn as a cobra, engages him in battle. A hyena interrupts their fight and kills them both. Yaśodhara is reborn as a fish; his mother is born as a crocodile. The crocodile tries to eat the fish, but a woman falls into the river, allowing the fish to escape. The king orders the capture, slow torture, and killing of the crocodile, later reborn as a she-goat. The fish lives a while longer and then is caught and fed to his former wife, Queen Amṛtamatī, as a result of his former action or karma. He next takes birth as a goat and impregnates his former mother. At the moment of his climax, he is gored by another goat and killed, but enters her womb as his own son. His former son, King Yaśomati, hunts and kills the goat that had once been his grandmother, but releases and spares the baby goat from her womb. One day Yaśomati plans a big sacrifice to the goddess Kātyāyanī involving the killing of twenty buffaloes. His mother (Yaśodhara’s former wife) doesn’t want to eat buffalo meat that day and asks for goat instead. The cook slices some of the backside of the goat who was once Yaśodhara. His former mother had been reborn as a buffalo; both were roasted by the cooks of the court.
The last phase of their tale finds both reborn as chickens in a tribal village. Their untouchable keeper, Caṇḍakarmā, begins to learn about yoga and meditation. A yogi teaches him about the foundations of Jainism and, during the course of their discussions, tells Caṇḍakarmā about the past lives of the two chickens and how their adherence to princely dharma caused them repeated suffering. The chickens, having learned of their past tribulations, decide to accept the precepts of Jainism. In their joy, they utter a crowing sound. At that moment, Yaśodhara’s son Yaśomati boasts to his wife that he could kill both chickens with a single arrow. Upon their death, Yaśodhara and his mother enter the womb of Yaśomati’s wife and are eventually reborn as twins.
Yaśomati continues his cruel ways of hunting until one day he encounters a Jaina sage. Yaśomati urges his hounds to kill the sage, but they refuse. The king has a change of heart and spares the sage, who in turn tells him the amazing tale of his (Yaśomati’s) twin children and how their misadventures were prompted by the sacrifice of a rooster made of flour. The king embraces the Jaina faith. The twins grow up to be great renouncers, and convince an entire kingdom to give up animal sacrifice. Eventually, having taken their final monastic vows, they fast to death and attain a heavenly state, further inspiring their host kingdom to widely embrace Jaina practices. The moral of the story, included in the final verses, states: “He who carelessly effects the killing of one living being will wander aimlessly on earth through many a rebirth.”6
We have explored two genres of animal stories in the Jaina tradition. The first lauds animals for making correct moral decisions and explains how the adoption of the Jaina ethic leads to heavenly states of blessedness, or perhaps even liberation. Pārśvanatha’s snake guardians reside in heaven; the lion who became Mahāvīra now dwells eternally in the state of liberation (mukti or kevala). The second genre shows the difficulty of animal life. Because of the initial intention to sacrifice a symbolic rooster, King Yaśodhara and his mother had to endure six animal births before regaining human status. In none of these instances, except perhaps when they were chickens, did these animals rise above their basest instincts. They displayed none of the virtues exhibited in the snake and lion stories cited above. Their plight, while it reminds the hearer of the tale of the preciousness of human birth, in no way valorizes or sentimentalizes the animal realm. Instead it serves to underscore the inviolability of the law of karma.
The Symbology of Animals in Jaina Tradition
The first part of the Ācārwāṅga Sūtra represents the earliest stratum of Jaina literature and can be dated to the fourth or fifth century BCE.7 In this remarkable book we find an eloquent and detailed appeal for the benevolent treatment of animals:
Some slay animals for sacrificial purposes, some slay animals for the sake of their skin, some kill them for the sake of their flesh, some kill them for the sake of their blood; others for the sake of their heart, their bile, the feathers of their tail, their tail, their big or small horns, their teeth, their tusks, their nails, their sinews, their bones; with a purpose and without a purpose. Some kill animals because they have been wounded by them, or are wounded, or will be wounded. He who injures these animals does not comprehend and renounce the sinful acts; he who does not injure these, comprehends and renounces the sinful acts. Knowing them, a wise man should not act sinfully towards animals, nor cause others to act so, nor allow others to act so.8
This respect for animals pervades Jaina literature and philosophy and has led to an array of distinctive lifestyle observances rooted in a concern to cause no harm to any animals.
Animal symbolism plays an important role in the story of Mahāvīra, the contemporary of the Buddha who widely promulgated the five primary vows of Jainism (nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, sexual restraint, nonpossession) and established the foundation for Jainism as we know it today. His birth was presaged by a series of auspicious dreams remembered by his mother Triśāla that include a variety of animals. The first dream included an elephant; the second, a beautiful bull; the third, a playful lion.9
In an account of his worldly renunciation given in the Ācārāṅga Sūtra, Mahāvīra is said to have been provided by the gods with a magnificent palanquin from which to descend as he entered the life of monkhood. In addition to being decorated with gems, bells, and banners, it also included pictures of “wolves, bulls, horses, men, dolphins, birds, monkeys, elephants, antelopes, śarabhas [fabled eight legged animals], yaks, tigers, [and] lions.”10 This reflects not only what we may presume to be the style of the times, but also a cultural consciousness of the nature and diversity of animals.
He then entered into twelve years of asceticism. During this time, not only was he described as “circumspect in his thought, circumspect in his words, circumspect in his acts … guarding his senses, guarding his chastity; without wrath, without pride, without deceit, without greed; calm, tranquil, composed, liberated, free from temptations, without egoism, without property,”11 he was also said to resemble or even replicate noble qualities associated with particular animals. The Kalpa Sūtra narrates,
His senses were well protected like those of a tortoise; he was single and alone like the horn of a rhinoceros; he was free like a bird; he was always waking like the fabulous bird Bharunda; valorous like an elephant, strong like a bull, difficult to attack like a lion.12
These qualities enabled Mahāvīra to gain the state of kevala, after which he became a great teacher and religious leader.
The Jaina tradition additionally came to associate most of its twenty-four Tīrthaṅkaras with a particular animal. Although stories of each of these are not readily available in English translation, a listing of the names and their attendant animals conveys a sense of the centrality of these animals in the tradition:13
1. Ṛṣabha (bull)
2. Ajita (elephant)
3. Sambhava (horse)
4. Abhinanda (ape)
5. Sumati (partridge)
6. Padmaprabha (lotus [flower, not animal])
7. Supārśva (nandyāvatara figure)
8. Candraprabha (moon)
9. Suvidhi/Puspadanta (crocodile)
10. Śītala (svastika)
11. Śreyāṃsa (rhinoceros)
12. Vāsūpujya (water buffalo)
13. Vimala (boar)
14. Ananta (hawk or bear)
15. Dharma (thunderbolt)
16. Śānti (deer)
17. Kunthu (goat)
18. Ara (fish)
19. Malli (water jar)
20. Munisuvrata (tortoise)
21. Nami (blue lotus)
22. Nemi (conch shell)
23. Pārśva (snake)
24. Mahāvīra (lion)
In Jaina iconography, the symbol (usually an animal) plays a central role in identifying the specific Tīrthaṅkara. All Tīrthaṅkaras generally are portayed identically, either in a seated (padmāsana) or standing (kāyotsarga) meditative pose. For instance, Ṛṣabha is portrayed with a bull generally worked into the base of his statues. The art historians refer to these clues as “cognizances” and readily admit that without the specific animal or symbol, it is impossible to name a particular Jina image.14
The Tradition of Animal Protection
In order to enhance one’s spiritual advancement and avoid negative karmic consequences, the Jaina religion advocates benevolent treatment of animals. The monks and nuns are not allowed even to lift their arms or point their fingers while wandering from village to village; according to the Jina, “This is the reason: the deer, cattle, birds, snakes, animals living in water, on land, in the air might be disturbed or frightened.”15 In passage after passage, the Jaina teachers exhort their students, particularly monks and nuns, to avoid all harm to living creatures. The speech, walking, eating, and eliminatory habits of the Jaina monks and nuns all revolve around a pervasive concern not to harm life in any form. Ultimately, the ideal death for a Jaina, lay or monastic, is to fast to death, consciously making the transition to the next birth while not creating any harm to living beings.
Manifestations of this concern for nonviolence can be found in the institutions of the pinjrapole or animal hospital and the goshala, or cow shelter. According to a 1955 survey, there were more than three thousand such animal homes at that time.16 During the 1970s, Deryck Lodrick conducted a study of more than a hundred of these institutions, many of which were founded and maintained by members of the Jaina community. His study illuminates the ongoing tradition of animal protection in India and also investigates the economic support from community used to maintain these facilities.
Lodrick’s description of perhaps the most famous pinjrapole follows:
In the heart of Old Delhi … opposite the Red Fort and close to the bustle of Chandni Chowk, is a pinjrapole dedicated entirely to the welfare of birds. Founded in 1929 as an expression of the Jain community’s concern for ahimsa, the Jain Charity Hospital for Birds’ sole function is to treat sick and injured birds brought there from all over the city. Many Jain families have actually set up centers in their own homes in various parts of Delhi, to which sick and injured birds in need of treatment are taken and then sent on to the hospital by messenger.
The hospital, located inside the premises of a Digambara Jain temple and supported entirely by public donations administered through the temple committee, receives some thirty to thirty-five birds daily Most of these are pigeons with wounds or fractures incurred in the city’s heavy traffic, although diseases ranging from blindness to cancer are treated by the hospital’s resident veterinarian. All birds, both wild and domestic, are accepted for treatment by the hospital with the exception of predators, which are refused on the grounds that they harm other creatures and thus violate the ahimsa principle. Incoming birds are treated in the dispensary on the second floor of the hospital (the first contains the staff quarters and grain store) and are placed in one of the numerous cages with which this level is lined. As birds improve they are taken to the third floor, where they convalesce in a large enclosure having access to the open sky. A special cage is provided on this floor for the weak, maimed, and paralyzed to separate them from the other birds. When birds die in the hospital, they are taken in procession to the nearby Jumna and are ceremoniously placed in the waters of that sacred river.17
Many of the pinjrapoles, particularly in the state of Gujarat, include insect rooms or jīvat khan. These rooms serve as receptacles for dust sweepings brought by Jainas. Knowing that these sweepings will include small insects, they will bring them to the pinjrapole, where they are placed in a closed room and sometimes given grain for sustenance. When the room is full, it is shuttered and locked for up to fifteen years. At the end of this waiting period, it is assumed that “all life will have come to its natural end” and the contents are sold as fertilizer.18 This reflects the depth of concern that Jainas feel for preserving life forms.
The origins of the Jaina. pinjrapole are somewhat difficult to trace. It could have developed in the early phases of Jainism (Aśoka’s inscriptions the third century BCE show similar concerns for animal welfare) or during the apex of Jainism, which lasted from fifth to the thirteenth centuries. In the state of Gujarat, a succession of kings gave state patronage to Jainism, such as Mandalika of Saurastra in the eleventh century, and Siddharāja Jayasiṃha, King of Gujarat, and his son and successor, Kumārapāla, in the twelfth century. Kumārapāla (1125-1159) declared Jainism the state religion of Gujarat and passed extensive animal welfare legislation.
We do know that the English merchant Ralph Fitch described pinjrapoles in 1583; he notes “They have hospitals for Sheepe, Goates, Dogs, Cats, Birds and for all other living creatures. When they be olde and lame, they keepe them until they die.”19 In Karnataka, where the Jainas have lived since 300 BCE, various kings have given support and patronage to the Jainas, particularly during the seven-hundred-year rule of the Ganga Dynasty beginning in 265 ce and its successor, the Hoysala Dynasty, which flourished until the fourteenth century.20 However, Lodrick notes that there are nearly no animal shelters in this area, and surmises that the periodic droughts and floods and the general climactic uncertainties of northwestern India cause calamities at fairly regular intervals that have required large numbers of farmers to seek shelter for their cattle in particular.21
To give both an historical perspective and a modern view of the Jaina pinjrapole, Lodrick cites the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency as listing the following animals in the Ahmedabad Pinjrapole at the beginning of 1875: “265 cows and bullocks, 130 buffalo, 5 blind cattle, 894 goats, 20 horses, 7 cats, 2 monkeys, 274 fowl, 290 ducks, 2,000 pigeons, 50 parrots, 25 sparrows, 5 kites (hawks), and 33 miscellaneous birds.”22 Exactly one century later, he finds the situation little changed, with similar lists of animals and a board of directors (exclusively Jaina) continuing to employ the services of a bookkeeper to keep track of the accounts and seeking financial support from various prominent businessmen and trade organizations.
In one sense, this seems like a work of great benevolence. One French observer in 1875, Louis Rousselet, in his description of the pinjrapole, paints an almost Rousseauian tableau:
Aged crows that have committed all manners of crimes live out their lives peacefully in this paradise of beasts, in the company of bald vultures and buzzards that have lost their plumage. At the end of the court, a heron, proud of his wooden leg, struts about in the midst of blind ducks and lame fowl. All the domestic animals and those that dwell in the vicinity of mankind are represented here; rats are seen here in great numbers and display remarkable tameness; mice, sparrows, peacocks and jackals have their asylum in this hospital.23
However, while seemingly idyllic, this scene also disturbs the Frenchman. Although he notes that “Servants wash them, rub them down and bring the blind and the paralyzed their food,” he also suggests that some of the animals would benefit from euthanasia. “Some of these animals appear to be so sick that I venture to tell my guide it would be more charitable to put an end to their suffering. ‘But,’ he replies, ‘is that how you treat your invalids?’”24
In the movie Frontiers of Peace produced by Paul Kueperferle, one can witness directly the pain and suffering endured by some of the animals housed in Jaina shelters. Some are grotesquely misshapen by old injuries and others seem to writhe in anguish. By the standards of Western veterinary medicine, these animals should be “put down.” However, for two reasons the practice of sparing animals more misery would be unacceptable from the perspective of the Jaina theory of karma. First, the person who would perform or approve of the killing would incur an influx of black, negative karma. This would bind to his or her life force (jīva) and further impede progress toward spiritual liberation (kevala), the state in which all karma is expelled. Second, it would do a disservice to the animal. As we saw above in the story of Yaśodhara, each life force earns its status on the basis of its past actions. As cruel as it might sound, the present predicament, according to the karmic view, holds that the animal deserves its suffering. It is acceptable and meritorious for someone to alleviate the suffering, which helps counteract negative karma on the part of the helper. But if one has done all that can be done to make an animal comfortable, then one has no further obligation, and particularly must not prematurely kill the animal. If so, then the perpetrator of the killing will thicken and darken his or her karma, and the killed animal would necessarily have to endure an eventually torturous further life to finish the atonement process.
Another aspect of the pinjrapole that can be somewhat offputting to those who have not been involved with nonprofit organizations stems from the fact that this pinjrapole is a business enterprise. It must collect money, maintain buildings, provide food and medical care, hire staff, and so forth. Particularly in circumstances of family legacies, disputes between board members, and the often emotional realities of real estate values, one can only surmise that the maintenance of a pinjrapole presents great challenges to maintain the Jaina vows of nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, sensual restraint, and nonpossessiveness.
Conclusion
We have surveyed various aspects of the relationship between humans and animals in the Jaina religious tradition. Like other traditions of India, Jainism not only proclaims a biological and psychological continuity between the animal and human realm, but also sees insects, micro-organisms, and life dwelling in the elements as part of the same continuum. The Jaina tradition developed a code of ethics that requires its adherents to avoid violence to all these life forms to the degree possible depending upon one’s circumstance. All Jainas are expected to abstain from eating animal flesh. Jaina laypeople are expected to avoid professions that harm animals directly or indirectly. Jaina monks and nuns strive to minimize violence to even one-sensed beings and take vows to not brush against greenery or drink unfiltered water or light or extinguish fires. Perhaps more than any other religion in human history, the Jaina faith seeks to uphold and respect animals as being fundamentally in reality not different from ourselves.
But at the same time, Jainism, with few exceptions, avoids sentimentalizing animals. Ultimately, the reason one respects animals is not for the sake of the animal, but for the purpose of lightening the karmic burden that obscures the splendor of one’s own soul. Seen positively, every act of kindness toward an animal releases a bit of karma. But the approach is more on the lines of a via negativa: by avoiding a potentially damaging entanglement with an animal, one can ward off a potential blot on one’s core being. Hence, Jainas, as a general rule, do not own pets. To keep a cat or dog would engage one in the abetment of violent behavior. With rare exception, cats and dogs are carnivores, which is in direct contradiction with Jaina teachings.
The stories told of animals in the Jaina tradition reflect the somewhat ambivalent attitude taken toward animals. On the one hand, we can find inspirational tales of animals who have acted virtuously and gained for themselves the reward of a higher, even heavenly birth. On the other hand, we can look at stories that do not valorize animals but show their shortcomings and follies. The Tattvārtha Sūtra states “Deceitfulness leads to birth in animal realms,”25 indicating that animals are born as animals because of their karmic impulses.
In conclusion, Jainism sees animals as former or potential human beings, paying for past sins yet capable of self-redemption. Human birth is considered to be the highest birth, as it is the only realm through which might enter final liberation or kevala. However, the best possible human life, that is, a life directed toward the highest spiritual ideal, takes the protection of animal life very seriously. The Ācārāṅga Sūtra (I.5.5) states that as soon as we intend to hurt or kill something, we ultimately do harm to ourselves by deepening and thickening the bonds of karma. According to Jainism, the best life pays attention to animals, not in a sentimental way, but in a way that gives them the freedom to pursue their own path, to fulfill their self-made destinies, and perhaps enter themselves into the path of virtue.
NOTES
