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

Page 552

-I, 35]
Pravacanasāra
387
and since they are the objects of knowledge.
27. The doctrine of Jina is that knowledge is the self and in the absence of the self there cannot be (any), knowledge; therefore, knowledge is the self, while the self is knowledge or anything else.
28. The knower has knowledge for his nature and all the objects are within the range of the knowledge, just as the objects of sight are within the ken of the eye, though there is no mutual inherence.
29. The knower, who is beyond sense-perception, necessarily knows and sees the whole world neither entering into nor entered into by the objects of knowledge, just as the eye sees the objects of sight.
30. The knowledge operates on the objects, just as a sapphire, thrown in the milk, pervades the whole of it with its lustre.
31. If those objects are not within the knowledge, knowledge cannot be all-pervasive; the knowledge is all-pervasive, how then objects are not existing in it. ?
32. The omniscient lord neither accepts nor abandons, nor transforms the external objectivity; he sees all around, and knows everything completely.
33. He, who clearly understands the self as of the nature of the knower on the authority of the scriptural knowledge, is called a śrutakevalin by the sages that enlighten the world.
34. That which is preached by the Jina through words, which are constituted of material substance,is called the sūtra (or the sacred text); knowledge consists in knowing it, and hence the sacred text also is designated as knowledge.
35. He who knows is knowledge; the self does not become a knower with knowledge (as an extraneous instrument). The very
1. I have taken na praviştah na avistah as against the commentators who take na avistaḥ (na apravista)).
2. Sound is material according to Jaina philosophy, and it is the result of the clash of molecules (see II, 40 infra; and also P. 79; TS. V, 24). According to the Vaišesika system, it is a quality of akāśa. When once it is accepted that sound is a quality, one is forced to find out some substance or the other, with which it is to be associated; and the Vaibesika school concludes that it is the linga of akasa, because no other substance is convenient for this attribution. As in Jainism, the Mimämsaka school holds that sound is a substance,
3. The doctor takes the temperature of the patient with the thermometer, i.e., his process of taking the temperature stands in need of an outside instrument. We are accustomed to define, nowadays, knowledge as the process of analysis and synthesis; and the author says that this process is not extraneous, but completely identical with, nay the very nature of the soul,