Jain Agam Sahitya

Author(s): K R Chandra
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 61

N. M. Kansara
37
refer to the individual soul when the moralistic duties (āya šāmāie') are referred to, when the moralistic and spiritual deeds work out in the soul ('n' annaitha āyāe parināmenti'), and especially when “jiva' and 'jivāya are explicitly equated with each other. The 'l is more strongly stressed when the term 'āyā' as such (*daviyāyā) as well as in its connection with passions, activity, cognition and other abstractions is quoted as 'kasāyāyā', 'jogāyā', 'nânäyà', etc. and when all of them prove either to occur or not to occur simultaneously with the individual being. Cognition, noncognition and belief, so it seems, permeate the personality and thus these definitions equal one another. Speech and inward-sense both mean something definitely different from the 'I', whereas this does not necessarily refer to the body, which may be explained by its constant external working. The submissions made in the Viyāhapannatti-sutra (VPS) are somewhat playful.
In contrast to the term “āya' or 'ätta', the VPS prefers to use the term "jiva' in the context of the individual soul or the Self. The topics discussed with regard to the jiva' in the VPS, are : the heaviness and the lightness, 14 causes of long and short life, 15 contentions of others about the nature of 'jiva’, 16 the size, 17 whether active by themselves or due to others, 18 the knowledge about present karma, 19 whether endowed with power,20 duration of knowledge, 21 types of knowledge, 22 aura or karma imprints,23 types of jivas, 24 types of ātmans, i.e. conditions of the jivas,25 types transmigratory jivas,26 the number of bodies of the jivas, 27 their sense-organs, 28 speceh,29 mind, 30 body,31 location,32 experience,33 instruments 34 inward-sense, 35 faculty of practising, 36 their activity, 37 modifications, 38 passions, 39 feeling, 40 consciousness, 41 death, 42 transmigration,43 birth,44 condition in enbryo,45 and their liberation.46 Shri Gopalbhai J. Patel, Dr. Sikdar and Dr. Walther Schubring have studied all these references in their scholarly works and have presented their findings systematically under suitable sub-heads. Dr. Sikdar,47 has discussed them under topics like the existence of the soul, plurality of soul, classification of soul, characteristics of a soul, and relation of a soul with speech, mind and body.