Jain Journal 1990 10

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

Page 40

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dravya-s. Out of these four dharma and adharma āstikaya-s are coextensive with lokākāśa55 and hence have the same cardinality. This is said as each and every space-point of lokākāśa has one point of dharma and one point of adharma only. But each space-point in loka can have many jivāstikāya and pudgalästikäya. 56 Jains contend that within a body of a soul many souls can reside as in one organism of an animal many micro organisms live. In other words jiva and pudgala admit of superposition much like waves in modern understanding. 57 Jiva and pudgala are denser than the space which makes room for it. Thus cardinality of jiva and pudgala is higher than the cardinality of lokākāśa but is lower than the cardinality of time as explained earlier. Jain thinkers regarded cardinality of pudgala to be higher than the cardinality of jiva because one soul is capable of adopting infinite bodies as they believed in the dogma of transmigration of soul or rather undestructibility of soul. In the cycle of transmigration one soul can adopt infinite bodies and infinite souls can adopt infinetely infinite bodies. Thus the cardinality of actual infinity embodied in soul dravya has to be less than the cardinality of actual infinity embodied by pudgala.
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Thus the cardinal hierarchy of dravya-s or alpabahutva of dravya-s is Akāśāstikāya > Kāla dravya > Pudgalastikāya > Jivāstikāya > Dharmastikāya Adharmastikāya. 58 The lowest cardinality being equal to the cardinality of cosmic space or lokākāśa.
For Jain theoreticians each of the dravya-s is capable of harbouring infinite modification (synchronic as well as diachronic) and are actual infinities and are all related to each other only in the framework of cardinality. We have formulated rational behind the order or framework of cardinality of actual infininities embodied by dravya-s. These actual infiinities are ontological entities representing six global principles of continuity and conservation. They are in a sense global physical actual infinities and their cardinal relations have also been arrived through physical argumentation. To understand entities smaller than global
55 Sthanangasutra [4.495], Tatvarthasutra [5.13] and Dhavala [III, p. 29, gatha 9]. 5 Sthanangasutra [1.254] says that at one space point infinite material monads can
be found. Tatvarthasutra [5.15, 16] compares soul with lamps whose light is the domain of soul. As in a room many lamps can be kept with equal domains so innumerous souls exist in same spatial domain.
57 It is only because of possibility of superposition that in asamkhyata pradesi cosmos ananta souls and anantananta material monads can be contained.
58 This hierarchy can be constructed from hierarchy of actual infinities given in Dhavala [III, pp. 30-31].