Introducing Jainism

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 20

INTRODUCING JAINISM
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and tried to account for the miseries. Buddhism says that the miseries of creatures are due to taṇhā (unquenchable thirst) for existence on the part of the creatures themselves. Jainism asserts that miseries and imperfections are due to karma (a series of actions) on the part of the unemancipated soul for which man comes to live in this world again. Hence if any godhood is attached, it is to be attached to a person who is a perfectly emancipated soul being possessed of omniscience, and a perfectly all-powerful man being absolutely free from all taints of selfishness. He is a person who saw the eternal verities as they were and realised the truth as they came to him. So to the Jains there is no need to accept an outside creator-God. This is the first principle which the Jains formulated with regard to the Vedic conception of creator-God.
Secondly, when the foundation of a creator-God is questioned, the other elements based on it naturally dwindles down. The validity of Sacrifice is criticised, particularly the elements of animal sacrifice. As the main object of Jainism is to establish the doctrine of Ahimsā (non-injury/nonviolence), animal sacrifice has no place in it.
: The Jains do not believe in the authoritative character of the Vedas. They contend that these Vedas cannot be said to be eternally self-existent. "The fact of non-remembrance of any author (kartur asmaranāt) of the Vedas does not prove that they had not any author at any time. In order to justify their case, they have given an example: In the case of an ancient well, an ancient house, or an ancient garden people may not know who in olden times made it, the name of its maker may long have been forgotten, but nobody would be prepared to say that the well, or the house or the garden is self-existent from the eternal past. The doctrine of the eternal existence of the Vedas is thus untenable. The Jains further point out that the very fact that the Vedas are a collection of words, so arranged as to carry an intelligible sense, shows that they were carefully made. So the Jains have refused to accept the validity of the Vedas as well as the sacrificial rites."
Thirdly, in Vedic literature Self or Ātman (or Ultimate