Jainism a Theistic Philosophy

SR No.: 006918
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishna A Gosavi
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 2012
Total Pages: 358
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 6 MB

Page 167

JAINA CONCEPT OF GOD IN JAINA THEISM
Darkness there was in the beginning of all. This was a sea without light: the germ that lay covered by the husk that one was born by the power of heat (tapas).
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Love overcame it in the beginning, which was the seed springing from mind, poets having searched in their heart found by wisdom the bond of what is in what is not.
Their ray, which was stretched across, was it below or was it above? There were seed-bearers, there were powers, self-power below, and will above.
Who then knows, who has declared it here, from whence was born this creation? The gods came later than this creation, who then knows whence it arose?
From whom this creation arose, whether he made it or did not make it, the highest seer in the highest heaven, he forsooth knows, or does even he not know?
Dr. Radhakrishnan remarked on the above Rgveda Mandala X.129 as follows:
"We find in this hymn a representation of the most advanced theory of creation. First of all there was no existent or non-existent. The existent in its manifested aspect was not then. We cannot on that account call it the non-existent, for it is positive being from which the whole existence arrives. The first line brings out the inadequacy of our categories. The absolute reality, which is at the back of the whole world, cannot be characterized by us as either existent or non-existent. The one breathed breathless by its own power. Other than that there was not anything beyond. First cause of all it is older than the whole world, with the sun, moon, sky and stars. It is beyond time, beyond space, beyond age, beyond death and beyond immortality. We cannot