Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 82

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JAIN JOURNAL
of souls forming a very small cluster, have respiration and nutrition in common, and experience the most exquisite pains. Innumerable nigodas form a globule, and with them the whole space of the world is closely packed, like a box filled with powder. The nigodas furnish the supply of souls in place of those who have reached nirvāna. But an infinitesimally small fraction of one single nigoda has sufficed to replace the vacancy caused in the world by the nirvāņa of all the souls that have been liberated from the beginningless past down to the present. Thus it is evident that the samsāra will never be empty of living beings (see Lokaprakāśa, vi, 31 ff.).
From another point of view mundane beings are divided into four grades : denizens of hell, animals, men, and gods ; these are the four walks of life (gati), in which beings are born according to their merits or demerits. 28
We have seen the cause of the soul's embodiment is the presence in it of karma-matter. The theory of karma is the key-stone of the Jaina system ; it is necessary, therefore, to explain this theory in more detail. The natural qualities of soul are perfect knowledge (jñāna), intuition or faith (darśana), highest bliss, and all sorts of perfections ; but these inborn qualities of the soul are weakened or obscured, in mundane souls, by the presence of karma. From this point of view the division of karma will be understood. When karma-matter has penetrated the soul, it is transformed into 8 kinds (prakrti) or karma singly or severally, which form the kārmana śarīra just as food is, by digestion, transformed into the various fluids necessary for the support and growth of the body. The 8 kinds of karma are as follows:
(1) Jñānāvaraņiya, that which obscures the inborn right knowledge (i.e., omniscience) of the soul and thereby produces different degrees
28 The Jainas recognize 5 bodies which an individual may possess (though not all
simultaneously), one gross and 4 subtle ones. Besides the karmanasarira, which is the receptacle of karma and has no bodily functions, there are (1) the transmutation body (Vaikriyasarira), producing the wonderful appearances which gods, magicians, etc., may assume ; (2) the translocation body (aharakasarira), which certain sages may assume for a short time in order to consult a Tirthakara at some distance ; (3) the igneous body (taijasasarira), which in common beings causes the digestion of food, but in persons of merit gives effect to their curses (that they burn their objects) and to their benedictions (that they gladden as the rays of the moon), etc. This doctrine of the subtle bodies, in which, however, many details are subject to controversy, seems to be the outcome of very primitive ideas about magic, etc. which the Jainas attempted to reduce to a rational theory. With the terms vaikriya and taijasasarira may be compared the vaikarika and taijasa ahamkara of the Sankhyas.