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CHAPTER FOUR
The third chapter chiefly offered an account of the hellish beings, human beings and animals; the present one chiefly offers an account of the gods or heavenly beings.
The Types of gods :
The gods are divided into four nikayas. 1.
Nikāya means a particular group of species. The four nikāyas or species of gods are as follows :
Bhavanapati, Vyantara, Jyotiska and Vaimānika. 1.
The lesya or soul-colouring appropriate to the third nikāya. 1The third species of gods is possessed of yellow leśyā. 2. Of the above four nikāyas of gods the third are Jyotiskas. They are possessed of just yellow leśyā. Here leśyā2 means leśyā of the dravya type—that is, lesyā of the form of bodily colour not
1. The Digambara tradition attributes four Lesyās-from black upto yellow-to the three species of gods-viz. Bhavanapati, Vyantara and Jyotiska; but the Svetambara tradition attributes these four lesyās only to the two species Bhavanapati and Vyantara while to the species Jyotişka it attributes a single lesya yellow. Owing to this difference of opinion the present aphorism as also the seventh read differently in the Śvetāmbara tradition; for the Digambara tradition has in the place of these two aphorisms just one-viz. āditas trișu pītāntaleśyāḥ.
2. For a special account of lesya see the Hindi Chautha Karmagrantha-Appendix pertaining to the term leśyā p. 33.
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