Cosmology Old and New

Author(s): G R Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 67

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SŪTRA 1 (Akāsa) (If space, in addition to accommodating other things conditions their motion and rest, then why do these siddhas whose tendency is to go upwards come to stay at the summit of the world?)
COMMENTARY The author evidently explains why it is necessary to postulate the existence of dharma and adharma Cannot ákāśa be credited with the function of motion and rest in addition to its own function of accommodating things? According to the author such a hypothesis would be impossible. It would be conflicting with other facts, for if it is also the condition of motion and rest, then wherever there is akāśa there should be free chance for motion and rest. But neither a single jīva nor a single atom of matter could step beyond the limit of lokākāśa though there is ākāsa beyond. Therefore the author concludes that space is not the condition of either motion or rest. These require independent principles as their condition. Akasa cannot be a substitute for dharma and adharma. The Jaina System evidently considers the world incomplete and unreal without the statical and dynamical principles.
In gātha No. 100, the author has emphasised the same point again. "Since there is a definite loka", he says, "and since there is space beyond, there must be something besides space which maintains the integrity of the system of things and persons. For space itself cannot have that function of maintaining the unity of the world." In a gāthā of Pañcāstikāya we have :
जदि हवदि गमणहेद् आगासं ठाणकारणं तेसि ।
पसजदि अलोगहाणी लोगस्स य अंतपरिवुड्ढी ।। (If space be the condition of motion and rest, of life and matter, then there would happen the disappearance of aloka or the beyond and the destruction and dissipation of loka or the world.)
COMMENTARY As a matter of fact, the world is an integral system of things, living and non-living, existing in space. That there is some force or power which holds the constituent elements of the
97. Ibid. gatha 101.