Jain Journal 1967 10

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

Page 30

72
may call the common-sense view. The Sankhyas adopt the former with regard to the souls or purusas which are permanent and without change. They adopt the latter when assigning to matter or prakṛti its character of unceasing change... the Sankhyas and Jainas are at one with regard to the nature of matter...but worked it out on different lines ... The Jainas do not recognise a psychical apparatus of such a common nature as the Sankhyas in their tenets concerning buddhi, ahamkāra, manas and the indriyas. The Jaina opinion is much cruder and comes briefly to this. According to the merit or demerit of a person, atoms of a peculiar subtle form which we still call karma-matter invade his soul or jiva Compare the Jaina tapas with what corresponds to it in Sankhya-Yoga. Their yoga contains some of the varieties of Jaina tapas; but they are regarded as inferior to meditation or contemplation. Indeed the whole of yoga centres in contemplation, all other ascetic practices are subordinate and subservient to contemplation-dhyana, dhāraṇā and samādhi. This is but natural in a system which makes the reaching of the summum bonum dependent on jñāna or knowledge. The theory of the evolution of prakṛti, beginning with buddhi, ahamkara and manas appears, to my mind, to have been invented in order to explain the efficiency of contemplation for acquiring supernatural powers and for liberating the soul. Sankhya-Yoga is a philosophical system of ascetics; but their asceticism has been much refined and has become spiritualised in a high degree. The asceticism of the Jainas is of a more original character; it chiefly aims at the purging of the soul from the impurities of karman. Jainism may have refined the asceticism then current in India; it certainly rejected many extravagances, such as the voluntary inflicting of pains; but it did not alter its character as a whole. It perpetuated an older or more original phase of asceticism than the Brāhmaṇical yoga, and carries us back to an older substratum of religious life in which we can still detect relics of primitive speculation."
JAIN JOURNAL
Comparing the Jaina view with that of the Nyaya-Vaiseşika school, Jacobi says:
"The atomic theory which is a marked feature of the Vaiseşika is already taught in outline by the Jainas. As regards the Nyāya system, it is almost certainly later than Jainism, for the dialectics and logic of the Jainas are of a very primitive character and appear entirely unconnected with the greatly advanced doctrines of the Naiyayikas."
Finally, we may note Jacobi's view about the place of the laity in the Jaina order which according to him has helped the permanence of the