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Some Noteworthy Features...
The adjective ananta means that having everything for its object' and its enployment only means that Mahavira was considered to be an omniscient. More noteworthy is the distinction here made between darśana and jħana; for it is in the light of it that we can argue that if even mati is a type of jñana then darsana must stand for bare sensory experience. These epistemological implications of certain incidental statements of our texts are sig nificant in their own way; yet it has to be admitted that these texts discuss no epistemological thesis as such and that in their times an epistemology specific to the Jainas was a thing of future.
12. No Special Mythology
In the sphere of mythology too our texts offer little that is characteristically Jaina. (In the present part of our discussion we are concerned with mythology in its cosmographic aspect-where there is undertaken a delineation of the heavens, the bells, the world-continents and worldoceans.) There is hardly ever a mention of births among gods. For, as is evident from the discussions of the later-day Jaina theoreticians, birth among gods is a case of a particularly auspicious next birth. But (as we have already seen) our texts have no use for the concept of an auspicious next birth. Sutrakṛtanga I does speak of certain bad monk being born among certain bad types of gods, but here the emphesis obviously is not on the gods being gods but on their being bad. As a general rule, these texts promise mokşa to an ideal monk and they threaten an evil person - whether a householder or a monk with birth among hellish beings, animals and the like. Thus unlike gods the hellish being come within the purview of discussion in an important manner. However, even of hells our texts offer no such account as is typically Jaina, this being true even of that chapter of Sutrakṛtanga I-viz. the fifth-hich is exclusively devoted to describing of hells. As for the world-continents and world-oceans there has arisen no natural occasion for describing them but in the course of its eulogy of Mahavira Sūtrakṛtānga I does offer a detailed account of the mountain Meru (6.1013). [This account of Meru can well be a late interpolation, for it is somewhat misfit where it appears. Thus employing a long series of similes the author here says about Mahavira that be is best among the monks just as Meru is best among the mountains, Nandana best among the forests, be easily Śalmalı best anong the trees, and so on and so forth. It can seen that to offer a detailed account of Meru in this context does not make much sense.]
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13. No Super-Humanization of the Biogarphy of Mahavira
The question of super-humanizing the biography of Mahavira arose when mythology in its historical aspect came to be elaborated. For it was
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