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* CATTLE, FIELD AND BARLEY
459
seeds (bija), and, I think, he is right, and this not only as far as Kaiyaţa is concerned: None of the other grammarians would have denied that seeds are equally living beings, and the explanation given by Vāšudevadikṣita, viz kşetre prarūdham alūnam sasyam iha vivakṣitam, (cf. § 2. 5. 3 above) has accordingly to be taken to imply that even if the plants have been killed by reaping them after ripening, the seeds they yield are in their turn something living. That is to say, vegetal life is seen under two aspects in accordance with essential biological processes, particularly clearly observable in annual economic plants; any seed capable of germination is a living being because the fact that it contains life becomes manifest by the very process of sprouting, and the plants betray their animatenesss by the very process of growing out of such seeds and continuing to grow until they die or are killed. .
There can hence be no doubt that the basis of all this is but one idea of animateness. This is strikingly confirmed by the material studied by H.-P. Schmidt 68: Both the aspects mentioned above are attested in his sources, too; yet, as most convincingly shown by him, they are but facets of one basic idea which he traces back to the expressed animism of Vedic times. This ‘archaic' animism was in India, as is well known, best preserved, i.e. almost unaltered, in Jainism 'according to which the whole world is animated --not only animals and plants but also the elements earth, fire, water, and air consist in atomic individual souls'. 69. And evidently it is this their doctrine to which Jinendrabuddhi refers
