Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

Author(s): Suzuko Ohira
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 120

SECTION B
AJIVA
189
The realities of the Jainas, i.e., pancastikayas-cum-addhasamaya or six drauyas, are in essence reducible to the doctrine of jiva and ajiva. We are going to treat pancastikayas along with addhasamaya as the fundamental realities of Jainism in this section, and jiva to which the following Section C is exclusively devoted, is only touched upon here where it falls in the frame of term of pancastikayas.
190
As the Bhagavati 11.10.118 defines, dharmastikaya, for instance, is the reality expressed by the sum total of the entire dharmastikaya prade's as in loka but not by its separate prade'sa/s. In other words, dharmastikaya consists of asti-kaya or the total mass that exists as it is by functioning the nature of dharma. Each astikaya thus functioning in its peculiar way is expressed by the total number of its prade'sas distributed in loka-aloka. Addhasamaya which is devoid of astikayatva as such is excluded from this category. It is already evident from this short introduction that the doctrine of pancastikayas evolved later than the theory of prade'sas, and that the quantity of their spatial units came to be computed after the rough outlines of Jaina cosmography had been drawn out.
191
A prade'sa is a unit of space measured by the size of an atom which is an indivisible, final element, and which is thereby beginning, middle and end in itself. This concept of prade'sa could not have evolved unless the concept of atom was first introduced to the Jaina scheme of pudgala. None of these concepts had yet arisen in the second canonical stage, but the canonical texts belonging to the fourth stage accept them as already established concepts. They must have thus evolved in the third canonical stage, and developed substantially in the fourth canonical stage. Fortunately, many relevant passages belonging to this period are preserved in our Bhagavati, which enable us to trace the process of their evolution and development. In view of all this, we would like to begin our survey with the scheme of pudgala documented in the Bhagavati before we proceed to take up the evolution of the doctrine of pancastikayas.