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The Kaliedoscope of Jaina Wisdom
tures, till at last the ambiguity and diversity of their various strata, with their different tendencies and different derivations, gave rise to divergent interpretations.
All the six so-called orthodox systems of Hindu Philosophy claim to have interpretations of this very same old work, and of this very same old philosophical system. Nothing could be stranger than this contest with one another of those six children of one and the same common mother, as it were, whom each of them pretends to represent in an authentic way, declaring all the others to be impostors. Everybody knows the names of these so-called Orthodox Hindu-Darśanas or Vedic Darśanas, viz., the Sāňkhya, Yoga, Mimāṁsā, Vedānta, Naiyāyika and Vaiseșika systems.
Different as they appear, still they agree with one another as well as with the true ancient doctrine of the Upanişads in several essential features, viz., the assumption of the reality of soul, which, whether individual or general, manifold, or one, is always thought to be eternal and all-pervading, the ideas of metempsychosis, of another world, of the two kinds of Karma, viz. Punya and Pāpa, and the assumption that individual soul can get rid of the inhering Karma substance and attain a state of final salvation.
[A] The Vedic Darśanas 1. Sänkhya
The name of Rși Kapila, the claimed founder of the Sānkhya system, occurs already in the Upanişads themselves, and the system too is mentioned in as early texts as the Anuyogadvāra and Aupapātika Sūtras of the Svetāmbara Jainas. Thus, there are no doubts concerning its high age.
The Sānkhya system knows of numberless periods of creation, each being followed by a period of Pralaya or decay. At the beginning of each creation, nothing exists but the couple Prakrti and Purușa, the eternal ones. "The Puruşa is the principal of life, the Jivātmā or Soul, which is thought to be manifold and pervading, devoid of quality, unable of action, and unable of change.
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