Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

SR No.: 006569
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 242
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 183

162 Jain Philosophy in Historical Outline
seems to be the first to determine the nature, object and utility of tarka and he has been followed by all later Jain logicians. The Jain tradition is one with the Mīmāmsaka in treating tarka as a cognition of the nature of pramāṇa. It stands for cognition of a relation of invariable concomitance.
Psychological Ingredients
The importance of sense organs is recognised in Jainism because they can give a correct sketch of external objects in all the diversity of their characteristics. The sense organs are distinguished into dravya-indriyas or physical sense-organs and bhāva-indriyas or their psychical counterparts.1 Sense perception is the result of the contact between the sense organ and the object, but it is simply a mechanical contact. Knowledge of external objects by perception is certainly gained through the senses, but the process of external perception does not involve the exercise of any separate or distinct sense, through the rise of the sense-knowledge in the soul takes place in association with a particular sense-organ, such as the eye. The senses have no existence apart from the Jiva. When the soul is said to occupy the whole body, it means that they are the physical counterparts of one entity. The sense organs are like windows for the soul to look out, but, they cannot modify the sense-knowledge which rises in the soul by inward determination, because it is already existent in it.
Since the sense-organs are the only outwardly instruments of the Jiva, the elements which render the enjoyment of all objects possible exist in the constitution of the Jiva itself. The Tattvärthadhigama employs the term Upayoga to denote the functioning of the senses and their reactions. The quickest to react is vision, followed by hearing, smell, taste and feeling. They are unequally distributed among the beings, and that is why the latter are divided into one to five senses. A good deal of psychological analysis is met with in the divisions of colour into five kinds, sound into seven, smell into two, taste into five and touch into eight. Next to the sense organs, we come across the conception of inward sense,called anindriya by Umāsvāti3 and equated with manas, which is without any organ. Emotions or instincts are sometimes called samjñā and sometimes abhoga which are concerned
1TTDS, II, 19.
2II, 18.
sibid, I, 14; II, 22. 'ibid, II, 25.