157
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_18
Chapter 18
A Cave at Taranga
18.1 A Question of Nirvana (Fig. 18.1)
At well over 1.353 billion people in 2020, India’s human density transforms the
sensation that otherwise separates urban from rural, rendering countryside suspect
and disappointing. By the time of the country’s first census in 1871, she numbered
over 235 million. But India’s ancient demographics—those coeval with the rise of
pan-Asiatic theories of karma, the invention of Nirvana, and the widespread adoption of ascetic disciplines, throughout the sixth and fifth centuries BCE—reveal an
estimated population of as many as 25 million people
1
. All those irrigation channels
can still be viewed through the lens of archaeology, as can the tens-of-thousands of
domesticated animal trails and human pathways from the towns to the forests. It has
always been a crowded, human environment. For the founders of great religious
traditions, 25 million individuals meant 25 million separate human natures, everchanging philosophies, aspirations, fears, and peopled dilemmas.
As much as the solitary yogi ventured into a wilderness to meditate, the teeming
marketplaces were always within earshot. This human geography helped inform the
quintessence of Jainism, alleged by Jain scholars to be the oldest ethical tradition
within India, and the one most indebted to the strong, inalienable bonds linking
laypersons in the towns to Jain mendicants who received their food from those merchant classes. Moreover, Jains tended to remain in the villages, and then cities,
averse to agricultural practices, as a rule, because agronomy was, at its core, not
merely a practice of nurturance, but of consumption. Without limits, consumption
turns to killing, and killing is antithetical to all things Jain, a traditional obsessed,
and rightly so, with sensory qualifications: all organisms, bespeaks Jainism, have
between one and five senses. Jains may only consume one-sensed beings, which
they do so grudgingly, with a distinct penitent remorse. When a Jain monk is no
1 Colin McEvedy; Richard Jones (1978). Atlas of World Population History. New York: Facts on
File. pp. 182–185.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_18
Chapter 18
A Cave at Taranga
18.1 A Question of Nirvana (Fig. 18.1)
At well over 1.353 billion people in 2020, India’s human density transforms the
sensation that otherwise separates urban from rural, rendering countryside suspect
and disappointing. By the time of the country’s first census in 1871, she numbered
over 235 million. But India’s ancient demographics—those coeval with the rise of
pan-Asiatic theories of karma, the invention of Nirvana, and the widespread adoption of ascetic disciplines, throughout the sixth and fifth centuries BCE—reveal an
estimated population of as many as 25 million people
1
. All those irrigation channels
can still be viewed through the lens of archaeology, as can the tens-of-thousands of
domesticated animal trails and human pathways from the towns to the forests. It has
always been a crowded, human environment. For the founders of great religious
traditions, 25 million individuals meant 25 million separate human natures, everchanging philosophies, aspirations, fears, and peopled dilemmas.
As much as the solitary yogi ventured into a wilderness to meditate, the teeming
marketplaces were always within earshot. This human geography helped inform the
quintessence of Jainism, alleged by Jain scholars to be the oldest ethical tradition
within India, and the one most indebted to the strong, inalienable bonds linking
laypersons in the towns to Jain mendicants who received their food from those merchant classes. Moreover, Jains tended to remain in the villages, and then cities,
averse to agricultural practices, as a rule, because agronomy was, at its core, not
merely a practice of nurturance, but of consumption. Without limits, consumption
turns to killing, and killing is antithetical to all things Jain, a traditional obsessed,
and rightly so, with sensory qualifications: all organisms, bespeaks Jainism, have
between one and five senses. Jains may only consume one-sensed beings, which
they do so grudgingly, with a distinct penitent remorse. When a Jain monk is no
1 Colin McEvedy; Richard Jones (1978). Atlas of World Population History. New York: Facts on
File. pp. 182–185.