जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
Abhakṣya 11 · the eater, and what cannot be weighed

Poison

विष

Poison is refused even where a mantra could counter it: it kills the beings in the stomach, and if it kills the eater it may cloud the last hours, when the mind should be clear.

This is the one item on the plate whose first reason is the eater. The commentary gives two: the innumerable gandolaka organisms in the gut that poison destroys, and the delusions that a poisoned death may bring, which matter because the texts hold that the state of the mind at the end shapes what comes next. Later writers, from the fifteenth century, add opium here.

The twenty-two, laid by their reasonsPravacanasāroddhāra 245–246 - the verse still recited, bāvīs abhakṣyathe sectors are the commentary's reasons, sized by count; the numbers on the bowls are the verse'sthirteen of the twenty-two are refused for beings you cannot seebeings you cannot seein it, or arising in it13beings without numbera soul in every seed, or infinite in one body3the elements, rawwater and earth, for no need3the eater, or unweighableharm to oneself, or what cannot be judged3the five figsthe four vikṛtis1umbarathe gūlar fig2vaṭathe banyan fig3pippalathe peepal fig4plakṣathe plakṣa fig5kākodumbarathe small fig6madhuhoney7navanītabutter8madyawine9māṃsameat14rātri-bhojanathe night meal17sandhānapickles18ghola-vaṭakapulse in raw curd22calita-rasafood that has turned15bahu-bījamany-seeded fruit16ananta-kāyathe common bodies19vṛntākabrinjal10himasnow12karakahail13mṛdearth11viṣapoison20amuṇiya phulla-phalaunknown fruit, flowers21tuccha-phalaempty fruit22bāvīs abhakṣyaPravacanasāroddhāra 245–246
The twenty-two, laid by their reasons - Poison highlighted

Measurements and counts

Place in the verse11
Reasonsbeings in the gut · the mind at the end
Later addedopium

Connected

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समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10