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OCTOBER, 1989
of other important considerations. If God is conceived as the creator or the cause of the world, then the world must be viewed as an effect of God. But the world cannot be viewed as an effect for the following reasons:
An effect is something which sometimes exists and sometimes doesnot. The world is ever existing. Because, the non existence of the world can never be the object of anybody's experience and this means the world is ever existing. And also there is no evidence that the world is destroyed as a whole. So, it is clear that the world does not satisfy the condition of being an effect. Therefore, the world cannot be an effect.
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The ninth-century Jaina philosopher Jinasena wrote in his Mahāpurāṇa: "Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected. If God created the world where was He before the creation ?.... No single being had the skill to make this world. For how can an immaterial God create that which is material?....If out of love for living things and need of them He made the world, why did He not make creation wholly blissful, free from misfortune?" Again Acarya Jinasena asks: "If God created the universe, where ws He before creating it ? If he was not in space, when did He localise the universe? How could a formless or immaterial substance like God create the world of matter ? If the material is to be taken as existing, why not take the world itself as unbegun? If the creator was uncreated, why not suppose the world to be itself selfexisting?""
The Jaina philosopher pertinently asks 'If every existent object must have a maker, that maker himself would have to be explained by another maker, etc. To escape from this vicious circle we have to assume that there is one uncreated self-explaining cause, God. But if it is maintained that one being can be self-subsistent, why not say that there are many others also who are uncreated and eternal similarly? Hence, it is not necessary to assume the existence of any First Cause of the universe."
The passages above demonstrate the Jainas' refusal to associate reality with any supernatural Being. In this sense Jainism is not a religion in the ordinary usage of the term. Prof. Basham's comment on the Jaina thought is worth quoting in this context. "Jainism, like
" W. Theodore De Bary, Sources of Indian Tradition, (Newyork, 1958), p. 76. C. J. Shah, Jainism in North India, (London, 1932), p. 35. Hemacandra, Syadvadamanjari, verse 6.
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