Ahimsa and Jainism

Author(s): Vijayvallabhsuri
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 96

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ancients, but also it underlies the universal belief of tranformation occurring in the natural course of things or produced by sorcery and spells. This is a point I wish to make, that the Sankhyas and Jainas started from the same conception of matter, but worked it out on different lines. The Sankhyas teach that the products of Prakrti are evolved in a fixed order, from the most subtle and spiritual one (Buddhi ) down to the gross elements, and this order is always reproduced in the successive creations and dissolutions of the world. The Jainas, on the other hand, do not admit such a fixed order of development of matter (pudgala), but believe that the universe is eternal, and of a permanent structure According to them matter is atomic, and all material changes are really going on in the atoms and their combinations. A curious feature of their atomic theory is that the atoms are either in a gross condition or in a subtle one, and that innumerable subtle atoms take up the space of one gross atom. The bearing of this theory on their psychology I shall now proceed to point out. But I must premise that the Jainas do not recognize a psychical apparatus of such a complex nature as the Sankhyas in their tenet concerning Buddhi, Ahamkara, Manas, and the Indriyas The Jaina opinion is much cruder, and