Jain Journal 1979 07

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

Page 18

JULY, 1979
The Rājaprašniya is the first Jaina work to advance arguments for the independent existence of soul. It adduces a number of arguments to convince that soul is something different from body. Even if imperceptible (by the sense-organs) soul is a real entity just as so many physical things are real even if imperceptible. The omniscient has a direct perception (extra-sensory perception) of this entity. The same soul can occupy an elephant's body in one life and an ant's in another. It is capable of contraction and expansion just like the light of a lamp.5
The Tattvārthasūtra® on the whole reproduces in a more systematic way the traditional material relating to the problem of soul. It deals with the following questions in this connection :
1. Different states of soul 2. Cognition as the difining characteristic of soul 3. Souls in bondage and liberation 4. Souls with mind and without mind 5. Mobile-bodied and immobile-bodied souls 6. Sense-organs and their objects 7. Process of transmigration
Different birth-places and births 9. Five kinds of bodies 10. Sexual urge 11. Premature death 12. Contraction and expansion of soul 13. Function of souls.
Later Jaina philosophers vindicated the nature of (worldly) soul as essentially conscious, changing, doer, direct enjoyer, equal in extent to its body, different in each body and possessor of material karmas. The existence of soul is proved by direct experience etc. It attains emancipation, which consists in the annihilation of all the karmas, through right knowledge and right conduct.
6 Rajaprasniya, 65-74.
Chapters II and V. 7 Pramana-naya-tattvaloka, 7.55-57.