Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 81

APRIL 1974
latter, now freed from the weight which had kept it down before the time of its liberation (for matter is heavy, and karma is material), goes up in a straight line to the top of the universe where the liberated souls dwell. But in the usual course of things the purging and binding processes go on simultaneously, and thereby the soul is forced to continue its mundane existence. After the death of an individual, this soul, together with its kārmaṇaśarira, goes, in a few moments, to the place of its new birth and there assumes a new body, expanding or contracting in accordance with the dimensions of the latter.
219
Embodied souls are living beings, the classification of which is a subject not only of theoretical but also of great practical interest to the Jainas. As their highest duty (parama dharma) is not to kill any living beings (ahimsa), it becomes incumbent on them to know the various forms which life may assume. The Jainas divide living beings according to the number of sense-organs which they possess the highest (pañcendriya) possess all five organs, viz., those of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing, while the lowest (ekendriya) have only the organ of touch, and the remaining classes each one organ more than the preceding one in the order of organs given above; e.g., worms, etc., possess the organs of touch and taste; ants, etc. possess, in addition, smell; bees, etc., seeing; the vertebrates possess all five organs of sense; the higher animals, men, denizens of hell, and gods possess an internal organ or mind (manas), and are therefore called rational (sañjin), while the lower animals have no mind (asañjin). The notions of the Jainas about beings with only one organ are, in part, peculiar to themselves and call for a more detailed notice.
It has already been stated that the four elements are animated by souls; i.e., particles of earth, etc., are the body of souls, called earthlives, etc. These we may call elementary lives; they live and die and are born again, in the same or another elementary body. These elementary lives are either gross or subtle; in the latter case they are invisible. The last class of one-organed lives are plants; of some plants each is the body of one soul only, but of other plants each is an aggregation of embodied souls which have all functions of life, as respiration and nutrition, in common. That plants possess souls is an opinion shared by other Indian philosophers. But the Jainas have developed this theory in a remarkable way. Plants in which only one soul is embodied are always gross; they exist in the habitable part of the world only. But those plants of which each is a colony of plant-lives may also be subtle, i.e., invisible, and in that case they are distributed all over the world. These subtle plants are called nigoda; they are composed of an infinite number