Jaina Philosophy of Non Absolutism

SR No.: 001213
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Satkari Mookerjee, S N Dasgupta
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 314
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, B000, & B025
File Size: 18 MB

Page 9

FOREWORD
The earliest parts of Jaina literature are earlier than the Buddha. We find the latter referring to Mahavira who was his contemporary, but in all probability the earliest Jaina literature, though not extant, is much earlier than Mahavira. The Buddhists and the Jainas have been opponents from the beginning and the idea of the lay and uninformed public that they are advocates more or less of the same type of thought because they both praise non-injury or Ahimsā as supreme moral conduct is absolutely false. Though Buddhism has always contested with the systems of Indian thought that are avowedly loyal to the Upanişads, yet a careful analysis will show that much of the ideas of Buddhism have sprung from a hostile response to the Upanișadic ideas as interpreted in Buddha's time and that much of it can be regarded as being reconstructions on the Upanişadic ideas, but we cannot say the same of Jainism. It reveals an ideology entirely different from the Vedic. It cannot however be gainsaid that in the later days the Jainas contested the Buddhists, the Vedāntists and the Naiyāyikas and they participated in some of their ideas and have adopted some of their stock arguments. The study of Jainism in its earlier aspects suggests a view that there must have been some kind of animistic philosophy among the inhabitants of the country though we are unable to say who they were. The Jaina literature was written in Prakrit and from its general trend one would regard it as a sort of folk-philosophy interested in overstraining the moral aspects without any theistic bias. This folk-philosophy had however elements in it which in the hands of later writers were connected into logical doctrines remarkable for their originality, acuteness and subtlety. This took place by way of writing commentaries on the old Agamas and also by way of independent treatises, written in abstruse Sanskrit of the commentary literature that prevailed between the 8th and the 12th centuries.
Dr. Mookerjee has undertaken to give us in this treatise a thorough shaking of a logical tree that was planted in the Agamas. The fruits were inaccessible in the high branches in the