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126 Harmless Souls of the jīva).5 Nevertheless, there is something odd about such a gāthā in a Jaina context. Why, for instance, is the jīva said to have no definable structure or configuration, when standard Jaina doctrine is that it has the shape of its current or, if released, final body?6
I shall have more to say about this later, but it is unlikely that it is simply a coincidence that the characterisation of the pure jīva given above could be just as well a description of the Vedāntic ātman-brahman, even down to the fact that it has cetanā as its quality (guna). In this respect it is interesting to compare Kundakunda's characterisation with that given in, for instance, Nemicandra's Dravya-samgraha, a tenth century Digambara work referring back to the Șatkhandāgama and
5 Matilal points out that Kundakunda's dual classification (vyavahāra- and niscaya-naya) 'has no direct connection with the usual seven standpoints of the Jainas, but corresponds to the ... distinction of two levels of truth in Mādhyamika Buddhism' or the same distinction made in Sankara's school of Advaita Vedānta. This view, which is peculiar to Kundakunda and those following him, describes the soul from the niścaya standpoint 'as independent, self-existent and uncontaminated by matter. This is the truth in the ultimate sense, a goal to be arrived at the final stage (sic.)'. But the vyavahāra standpoint 'describes the soul as one that is involved in karma as well as in the birth and re-birth cycle (samsāra)' (1981, p. 43).
I shall discuss this distinction and the ways in which Kundakunda uses it at length when I deal with the Samayasāra - see p. 239ff., below.
Samsthāna is the term used, for example, at TS. 8.11 to denote the figure of the body. There are, however, other instances of this kind of description; thus in a passage in the Ayāramga-sutta the liberated self is held to be indescribable: arūvi sattā, apayassa payam natthi - 'its essence is without form; there is no mark for what is without mark' (quoted by P.S. Jaini, JPP p. 271, fn. 41., who translates, 'there is no condition of the unconditioned').
On the dimensions of the jiva, see JPP pp. 58ff., 102, 269. As P.S. Jaini remarks, it is only the Jainas who posit a soul that is at the same time 'nonmaterial and yet subject to contraction and expansion when in its mundane state and is therefore 'of the same dimension as its body (sva-deha-parimāņa)' [JPP p. 58). So this is part of the same problem as that raised at Pravac. 2:81.
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