(Fwd) Re: kaara.naat paapam

[Maitrimurti]

Forwarded message:
From:     Self <RRZ-CIP-1/FO4A007>
To:       "Robert J. Zydenbos" <zydenbos at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:  Re: kaara.naat paapam
Date:     Mon, 16 Dec 1996 11:56:58

> Date sent:      Thu, 12 Dec 1996 21:55:19 GMT
> Send reply to:  indology at liverpool.ac.uk
> From:           "Robert J. Zydenbos" <zydenbos at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in>
> To:             Members of the list <indology at liverpool.ac.uk>
> Subject:        kaara.naat paapam

> mm> Prof. S.A. Srinivasan [...] is interested in sources for and
> mm> information and clarification regarding the terms kaara.naat
> mm> paapa.m and kaara.naat pu.nya.m. The terms are encountered in the
> mm> commentary by Samaradivaakara to the Jain text Niilake"sii.
> 
> I do not know that particular text, but it seems to me a technical term
> from Jaina karmasiddhaanta. I came across it in my study of Jaina
> ritualism.
> 
> There are three ways in which both kinds of karmic influx (pu.nya as well
> as paapa) are bound: through doing (kara.na), causing to be done by
> somebody else (kaara.na) and approval of somebody else's doing
> (anumodana). [Recently I have written a little about this in a note in my
> article on "The Ritual Giving of Food to a Digambara Renunciant", which is
> about to appear in the volume of collected papers of the conference
> "Approaches to Jaina Studies: Philosophy, Logic, Rituals and Symbols" held
> in Toronto last year. This book should appear with the Univ. of Toronto
> press.]
> 
> The phrase "kaara.naat paapam" would therefore mean that the person in
> question accumulates bad karma not through any act which he himself has
> committed, but because he has made somebody else commit that act. (Please
> ask Prof. Srinivasan whether this makes sense in the context of his
> reading.)
> 
> Robert Zydenbos
> 

        Thanks for your help. There is no doubt at all as to what 
kaara.naat paapa/pu.nya mean. They intend indirect causation in the 
sense, for example, respectively, of not slaying yet eating meat with 
the result that the meat eater accumulates the paapa of slaying, and 
of worshipping the bodhi tree -- because it evokes veneration of the 
Buddha -- with the result that the worshipper obtains the pu.nya of 
Buddha worship. What I wanted to know was whether the expressions 
<<as such>> are found elsewhere, and it seems that they aren't. 
Samayadivaakara becomes intelligible only on the assumption that the 
terms were so well known that they called for no comment, though he 
(he? somebody else? he himself in an after thought?) does define them 
in the above sense at a <<later>> point, but <<not>> at their first 
mention.

Srinivasan