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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Pravacanasara
end so far as a particular soul is concerned; in emancipation the individual spirit or soul is at its best. In that state the individual fully develops all-knowledge, all-vision, all-bliss and all-power. It is not the obliteration of the individual, nor of the inherent individual traits, nor is it the submergence of the individuality into some universality.
9. JAINISM IN INDIAN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.--This brief survey of some of the important tenets of Jainism compared and contrasted here and there with those of other Indian systems tempts me to try to state tentatively the position of Jainism in the evolution of Indian religio-philosophical thought. Its nonacceptance of Vedic authority, wholly common with Buddhism and partly with Sāmkhya, perhaps indicates that these three belong to one current of thought. They have in common the theory of transmigration with the attendant pessimistic outlook of life and Karma doctrine as an automatic law of retribution which appear definitely for the first time in Upanişads so far as the Vedic literature is concerned. The humane and ethical outlook and the downright denunciation of Himsā, whether for personal ends or for sacrificial purposes, are common to all the three. That Buddhism and Sāmkhya have much in common is not a new thing to orientalists. Ontological dualism, the plurality of spirits, the misleading of the spirit by matter, the early Samkhya belief that there are as many Prakřtis as there ere Purusas and many other technical details are common to Jainism and Samkhya. In all the three systems there is no place for a creator or a super-human distributor of prizes and punishments. These common points are at times not at all consistent with the natural evolution of the Vedic religion till almost the middle of the Upanişadic period. Especially the Sămkhya, which is accepted as orthodox possibly because of its fascinating terminology, inspite of its glaring inconsistencies with the accepted orthodoxy, has influenced some of the Upanişads; and later on being coupled with theistic Yoga it became unquestionably orthodox. In view of these common points between Jainism, Sāmkhya and Buddhism and their common differences with the Aryo-Vedic religious (p. 95:] forms, and in view of some of the peculiar tenets of Jainism in common with Ājivika, Pūraņa Kassapa's order etc., I am inclined to postulate a great Magadhan religion, indigenous in its essential traits, that must have flourished on the banks of Ganges in eastern India long before the advent of the Aryans into central India; and possibly at the end of the Brāhmaṇa period these two streams of Aryan and indigenous religious thoughts met each other, and the mutual interaction resulted on the one hand into the Upanişads in which Yājñavalkya and others are, for the first time, preaching Ātmavidyā and on the other, in contrast to the Vedic ritualistic form of religion practised by the masses, into Jainism and Buddhism that came prominently to the fore as the strong representatives of the great heritage of Magadhan Religion.2
1 Keith: Samkhya System pp. 15-6;. Ideas like transmigration are accepted as a definite
fact only in the Group three (and partly also Group four) of the Upanişadic tract of litera
ture, see Belvalkar & Rapade: History of Indian Phil., Vol. II. p. 375. 2 I had first set forth this theory in my paper ‘Mahāvira and Buddha on Nirvana' read before the Sanskrit Association, Rajaram College, Kolhapur in 1932; it was published in the College Magazine and subsequently the major portion of it appeared in Jaina Gazette