Jain Journal 1979 07

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

Page 17

10
The Prajñāpanã gives a comprehensive account of the nature of soul. Almost all general information concerning the living beings is offered in the first five chapters of this canonical text. The first chapter presents an elaborate classification of the animate world. The second chapter gives information as to which parts of the world are inhabited by which classes of living beings. The third chapter deals with the relative numerical strength of the different classes of living beings. The life-duration of these classes is given in the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter makes an enumeration of the counts on which two worldly souls may be compared with each other. All these and similar other details are mostly dogmatic.
The Prajñāpanä devotes several chapters to the problems related to body and bodily activities. Similarly, it devotes a number of chapters to the problems related to cognitive, affective and conative activities. Some of the chapters are exclusively devoted to the treatment of karma which is at the root of all worldly life.
The Jīvājīvābhigama classifies the world of living beings variously in its different chapters. These may be called natural classifications. In the case of each classification the following questions are discussed:
1.
2. Life-duration
3. Period of continuous existence
4. Period of continuous non-existence
5. Relative numerical strength.
Much of the subject-matter of the Jiväjivabhigama is common with the Prajñāpana.
Sub-classification
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The Jivajivavibhakti chapter of the Uttaradhyayana offers a most basic account of the living beings. Whereas the Prajñāpanā describes the classes of living beings in the simple order of one-sensed, two-sensed, three-sensed, four-sensed and five-sensed, the Uttaradhyayana first divides the living beings into two broad classes, viz. immobile and mobile, and then sub-divides the former into three classes, viz. earth-bodied, waterbodied and plant-bodied, and the latter into three, viz. fire-bodied, air-bodied and gross-bodied (udaratrasa). The gross-bodied class consists of the two-sensed beings, etc. This procedure is adopted in the Jivājīvābhigama also (chapter I) and in later times Umasvati also supported it, but it was foreign to all old canonical texts and Digambara works.
4 Tattvarthasutra, 2.12-14.