Religious Quest of India

SR No.: 011031
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J N Farquhar, Griswold
Publisher: J N Farquhar Griswold
Total Pages: 365
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 121

FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS
95
A famous śloka of the great Hemācārya thus describes the characteristics of the jiva:
It performs different kinds of actions, it reaps the fruit of those actions, it circles round returning again; these and none other are the characteristics of the soul.
Jiva has further been described as a conscious substance, capable of development, imperceptible to the senses, an active agent, and as big as the body it animates.1
In a most interesting note Dr. Jacobi suggests that the Jaina have arrived 'at their concept of soul, not through the search after the Self, the self-existing unchangeable principle in the ever-changing worl' of phenomena, but through the perception of life. For the most general Jaina term for soul is life (jiva), which is identical with self (āyā, ātman)'; 2 and the way in which the category jiva is divided and subdivided, building up from the lesser to the more developed life, certainly bears out Dr. Jacobi's contention; for the Jaina lay stress on Life not Self.
Sometimes jīva itself is considered as a division of Dravya (or substance), its chief characteristic being caitanya (consciousness).
This conscious sentient principle, jīva or ātmā, so long The as it feels desire, hatred and other attachments, and is powers or Prāņa fettered by karma, undergoes continual reincarnations. possessed In each new birth it makes its home in a new form, and by Jiva. there assumes those bodily powers or prāna3 which its various actions in previous births have entitled it to possess, for the possession or non-possession of any faculty depends on karma. The most perfectly developed jiva has ten prāņa and the lowest type must possess at least four. Of these ten prāņa, five are called Indriya prāṇa, since they relate to the senses. They are the sense of touch
1 Bhandarkar, Search for Sanskrit MSS. in 1883–4, p. 106. 2 S. B. E., xxii, p. 3.
Much confusion has arisen through not distinguishing the Jaina use of the word prana from the Vedantist, with whom it means breath, and who say that there are five vital prāņa or breaths.