________________
674
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
“(4) Siva is primarily the cause of Branha's creation by his destroying the worldly desires, and, lastly, he is the cause of final liberation by annihilating the good effects of religious devotion and practice,
"(5) Bramha, Vishnu and Siva, as explained above, exhaust tho religious requirements for the final omancipation of man."
It would thus appear that right discernment, dharma (religious observance), and renunciation (vairágya) are the three primary conceptions on which the Pauranic Triad is founded. *
But the widest significance is to be attached to these conceptions in unravelling mythological thought, since the very nature of the mental faculties precludes division by metes and bounds, and, therefore, makes it possible for the productions of fancy to encroach on the territories of one another. Besides, it is but rare to find a faculty or function with only one aspect, so that it would be strange if the gods representing them were not endowed with complex personalities.
Bearing these observations in mind, we can see that Vishnu is not a personification of dharma as an abstract principle or thing, but of a consciousness saturated with it (dharma). As such, he incarnates again and again periodically, because in the very nature of things a change must occur for the better whenever conditions become unbearable. As a rule, general wickedness, impiety and vice bring on unprecedented calamities on the race, and there is nothing like calamity to set
* Of thosc conceptions, right discernment leads to the observanco of dharma, resulting in the accrual of virtue and consequently also of prosperity to the soul; but absolute renunciation, culminating in the cessation of vice as well as virtuc, is the cause of mokshu, Honco, is Siva tho gencral destroyer,
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org