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THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
possessing its own characteristic sense qualities of touch, taste, smell and colour).
Jaina Concept of the Soul and its Relation to Knowledge
Knowledge, according to Kundakunda, constitutes the inalienable attribute or quality of soul or consciousness (chetana). He states: "He who knows is knowledge (jo janadi so nanam); but the self does not by the help of its knowledge becomes something-that-is-knowing (jnayaka)”; knowledge evolves by itself, and all the objects reside in knowledge (PS 35). Knowledge is the evolution (parinama) of the soul knowing though the evolution cannot be separated from the evolving self. The forced supposition (klesh kalpana) of a separation of knower and knowledge is superfluous (PS 35 AC).
In this context, H.M. Bhattacharya observes: A conscious reality is never divorced from its own conscious modifications and qualities in which lies its very life... A parinama (state-of-evolution] or modification issuing from the parinami (the evolving being) or the modifying, and yet not in essential relation with the parinami, is as false an abstraction as the aparinami (unchanging) or immutable real without any parinama or modification.
This conception of the self or soul as a dynamic or evolving eternal reality (parinami nitya) something persisting or enduring through its modes cannot be differentiated from knowledge. This view of the self and its relation to knowledge is quite different from the Samkhya “conception of the self as a static and unmodifying (aparinami) eternal principle which does not enter into the constitution of knowledge, but which merely looks on it from a distance as it arises, as a modification of an unconscious principle (prakrti). This virtual separation between the self and knowledge (buddhi) entails an actual stultification of each of them."99 In this context, Nathmal Tatia remarks:
Consciousness of the jiva manifests itself in cognitive acts, and is not like the unchanging principle of consciousness in the Samkhya-Yoga school which ascribes the cognitive acts of buddhi (intelligence) which is an evolute of the unconscious principle of prakrti... Consequently [Jainism) does not differentiate the metaphysical soul (jiva) from the epistemic subject (jnata) as is done in Samkhya-Yoga and monistic Vedanta.100
