Gandharavada

SR No.: 006739
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Esther A Solomon
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyasabha
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 400
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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of worldly existence can take place just accidentally without any cause, that is to say mokşa (emancipation) should not require any cause or effort. And if body, etc. can emerge without being caused, ass's horn should also so emerge, but that is not what we find. Moreover, if body, etc. have no cause, how could they have a definite shape ? Why could not the body emerge without a definite shape as the clouds do? All these problems cannot be solved if Svabhāva is taken to mean ‘non-causality'. Hence Svabhāva cannot mean ‘non-causality' (1791).
Even if Svabhāva means "attribute of a thing’, it cannot remain eternally similar, and so cannot give rise to a similar body, etc.. The modes of a thing are diverse — of the form of origination, persistence, destruction — and they do not eternally remain the same. The attributes of a thing, e. g. blue colour, etc. are seen to undergo other transformations. So Svabhava as 'attribute of a thing' cannot always remain similar. Moreover, if Svabhāva is taken to mean 'attribute of a thing', it will have to be clarified whether it means attribute of soul' or 'attribute of matter'. If it is the former, it being incorporeal, cannot be the cause of body, etc. which are corporeal, as the incorporeal åkāśa cannot be the cause of corporeal things. If it is attribute of matter, it is the same as karman, since Mahāvīra and his followers recognise karman as an attribute of pudgala or matter having spatial existence (pudgala-astikāya) (1792).
Thus there is nothing wrong if syabhāva is accepted as a modification i. e. attribute of a thing in the form of karman which is material, and if it is recognised as the cause of the diversity in the world. But it cannot be maintained that it remains eternally similar. On the contrary it is of diverse varieties on account of the diversity of its causes--perversity, etc., and so its effects too are diverse. Thus it should not be insisted upon that there is complete similarity in the otherworldly existence; the possibility of dissimilarity should be admitted (1793).
The fact is that not to speak of worldly existence alone, the nature of everything in the world is such that certain