Jainism in North India

SR No.: 011067
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Chimanlal J Shah
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 3 MB

Page 83

JAINISM IN NORTH INDIA that none else than the one who has rightly subdued all the good or bad forces that surround the soul can attain heights, and as a mark of their great victory all Tirthankaras are called Jinas, or Victors. "The soul which has perfect perception, perfect knowledge, infinite bliss and infinite power," says Yogendracarya," is a perfect saint, and being self-manifested, is known as Jina-Deva (or the divine conqueror)." I All these omniscient souls, after their span of life on this earth is over, reach final emancipation or Moksha. Thus Nirvana or the final hberation of the Jainas is a state of being, without qualities and relation, and remote from all chances of rebirth. Like the Buddhists, it is not an escape into Nirvana or nothingness & It is an escape from the body though not from existence "It is not the fact of existence which is the evil in the eyes of the Jainas; it is life which is bad" 4 The body being separated from the soul, the animate being gains freedom from the trammels of the successive series of existences, and thus Nurvana is not the annihilation of the soul but its entry into a state of blessedness which has no end." (The liberated) is not long or small ...; not black nor blue.. ; not bitter nor pungent . .; is without body, without resurrection, without contact (of matter), is not feminine nor masculine nor neuter; he perceives, he knows, but there is no analogy (whereby to know the nature of the liberated soul); its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned." 6 Coming to some of the prominent features of Jainism, the first thing that would strike us most is the ideal of Ahimsa as propounded by it Kundakundacarya states that "Jiva is conscious, fornless, characterised by Upayoga, attached to Karma, the Lord, the agent, the enjoyer (of the fruits of Karma), the pervader of bodies (large or small); that which goes upward to the end of 1 Cf Jaini, op cip 78 : As matter of detail we may observe that the Digambara sect of the Jalnas agrees with the Buddhists in maintaining that no woman has the capacity of attaining Nurcana To the Digombras, before she can cver reach Dohaha she has to undergo rebirth BS 8 man, while to the Sictimbares the path of Molsha is open to all, whicther man or woman SFR Fitrate (Lihe man therc 19 Nirana for woman), says Sakatlyunucarya in his "Fif f t ."- J.SS, 11, Nos 3-4, Appendix 2, "Buddhists seem to use their common word Nurcana as connoting etinction not onls of desire, with such thc Joints would ngece, but also of the soul atsell, which they would indignantly deny "--Stevenson (Ers), op art. p 17 * Birth, op cit, p 147 Jacobi, SD.D, E, p 52