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peculiar and are not shared by any other philosophers at least in India. The Jains believe also the elements, earth, water, wind and fire, to house innumerable souls or to be bodies of souls, which may be called elementary “bodies” and souls. Only when the elementary bodies, the earth bodies, water bodies, etc., have been quitted by the souls, they become "lifeless" matter. Thus cold water is believed to contain souls and therefore 'sadhus' may not use it. Thus from the Jain point of view, we may speak of lifeless matter only in a restricted sense, as most matter may temporarily at least be regarded as embodying souls. But this is not yet all. There is still one more kind of being, the lowest of all and invisible to our eyes. These beings are called Nigodas, In order to explain what is meant by this term. I remark that plants are according to the Jains either visible or invisible; the Nigodas belong to the invisible kind. Now some plants are bodies of one soul only, others, and these are the majority, consist of a great number of bodies forming one colony, trees or stock. The Nigodas are such plants; they are infinitesimally small .globes containing numberless cells and in each all there are lodged numberless beings, the Nigoda beings who have all'animal functions in common. With these
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
