Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

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Pravacanasăra
pure reality'.1 This direct spiritual experience is a self-guaranteed vision and hence accepted as the foundation of religion; that is exactly the reason why Jaina and Buddhist prophets are claimed to be Sarvajñas.
NECESSITY AND PROOF OF OMNISCIENCE.-This doctrine of Sarvajñată has been a bone of contention between different schoolmen; the problem is twofold: first, whether omniscience is humanly possible, and secondly, whether so and so is omniscient. The Indian philosophical systems that accept Veda as a self-guaranteed authority have totally denied the first part and partially the second. Jainism and Buddhism, with whom Veda has never been an authority perhaps for racial and geographical reasons, accept the first part but differ among themselves on the second point: that is but natural. They have struggled hard to prove and to establish the omniscience of their (p. 80:] respective prophets, for on that depended the very life and death of their systems; it was the omniscience that could give infallibility to their prophets and therefore automatically to their scriptures that constituted the utterances of these prophets. A good deal of literature has grown round this topic. With Kundakunda sarvajñatā is a dogma, a religious heritage and an essential part of the doctrine he represents; he has not tried to prove it logically, perhaps it was not needed in his days. The Nijjuttis show the traces of the logical approach to the subject, but the definite period of polemic logic in Jaina literature, so far as the existing Jaina works are concerned, begins with Samantabhadra (circa 2nd century A.D.); this period almost corresponds with the adoption of Sanskrit by the Jainas which was more convenient for polemical style. Umāsvāti is the first Jaina author to adopt Sanskrit; in his Tattvārthasūtra he describes omniscience (I, 10, 11, 29) on the same lines of Kundakunda, but he does not attempt to prove it. The relative chronology of Jaina authors requires that Umāsvāti might have flourished somewhere between Kundakunda and Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra tries to prove the possibility of sarvajñatā; perhaps he has in view some attack either by Cārvāka or Mimāmsä on the Sūtras of Umāsvāti. Samantabhadra's verses about Sarvajñatā have been looked upon as profound, full of meaning; and all the following authors, right upto the end of middle ages, have tried to prove the possibility of Sarvajñatā almost on the very capital of Samantabhadra's arguments. The subject has been discussed with great zeal for centuries together by some of the greatest logicians that the Sanskrit language has ever come to be handled by.2
1 This statement of Joad reads like a gāthă of Kundakunda rewritten. It only means that
in the interpretation of Reality the denominational religions, with which our relations are determined by the accidents of time and place, disappear into one Religion of transcen
dental experience of the Real. 2 It would not be out of place, if I give here references to various important discussions
about Sarvajñată, in Indian Literature, arranged according to relative chronology. Really the logical discussion about Sarvajñatā begins with Samantabhadra (c. 2nd century A. D.) who tries to establish Sarvajñatā in his Aptamīmāmsä, verses 5-6. Siddhasena, who is undoubtedly later than Kundakunda, who flourished possibly after Samantabhadra, and who is generally assigned to the end of the 6th century A. D. (or even a century or two, I think, he might be earlier), in his Sanmati-prakarana (Ed. Ahmedabad 1930), 2nd kända, discusses about Kevalajñāna, the same as Sarvajñāna or Sarvajñatā, particularly with the background of the Svetämbara canon in view. From some verses quoted by Anantakirti