Gandharavada

Author(s): Esther A Solomon
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyasabha

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mean that it is a product of this conglomerate; similarly consciousness cannot be said to emerge from the conglomerate of the material clements, but is an attribute of the soul.
To return to our point, the soul is directly and fully perceptible to one who is free from all passions and whose knowledge is unobscured. Thus the soul is perceptible to all, though partially. Its knowledge can also be arrived at by inference and this helps us to conclude that others' bodies too have a soul associated with them as our body has. It is not absolutely necessary that the lingin (signified) should have been cognised previously as concomitant with the linga (mark) in order that we might be able to utilise inference. A spirit is generally never observed as making all sorts of gestures, and yet from certain gestures like laughing, screaming, etc. we infer the existence of a spirit in the body. Similarly we can employ a number of inferences to demonstrate the existence of the soul. To take but two instances :- The maker of the body must exist because it has a definite shape which has a beginning, like the jar which has a maker; or, The manipulator of the senses exists, because they are instruments, as the potter is the manipulator of staff, wheel, etc.. The soul is this maker, manipulator and so on, for the concept of God, according to the Jainas, does not stand the test of reasoning. The soul too, like the potter, etc, is, in a way, corporeal so long as it is in the transmigratory condition, for it is enveloped in the aggregate of the eightfold material karman. A newly-born child's knowledge or desire, etc must be preceded by another knowledge or desire, etc. respectively, because it is of the nature of knowledge or desire, .etc. These are attributes and so must have a substratum. The soul is this substratum and is thus distinct from the body and persists even when the previous body has perished
Moreover the very fact that there is a doubt about the soul establishes its existence, for there can be no doubt with regard to what is utterly non-existent. For instance, we have the doubtful cognition, “Is it a man or a post?"; man and post are both real. Error with regard to a thing or negation of a thing is possible only if the thing is real, When we say the ass's horn