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JAIN JOURNAL
Vol. XXXV
No. 1 July
2000
SOUL AND ITS FUNCTIONAL MECHANISM IN JAINISM
ELUCIDATION BY ĀCĀRYA KUNDAKUNDA
DR. S.A. BHUVANENDRA KUMAR The West in the present is evidently concerned with the issue of rights, whether it is of the animals or of the humans. In this sense the great American President Abraham Lincoln, who held the view that rights of the animals and the humans form the way to a complete human being, was a pioneer thinker of a great stature on the rights of all beings. This Western thought in the ancient Indian subcontinent had been the center of its philosophical mainstay with th of Jainism since a hoary of antiquity. As its doctrinal foundation, Jain religion weighs heavily on the issue of animal and human rights and assume an enormous dimension in its metaphysics which has a dimensional underlining markedly drawn with a view that animals do make no self-claim rights as overzealously as the humans do. Therefore, it can be factually stated that Jainism treats the whole challenge club together human and animal rights to a single system structured on moral ethos and spiritual measurements. This doctrine of all living beings, which could be termed as 'Science of Regeneration and Liberation' addresses issues like body, soul and its functional mechanism associated with consciousness and emancipation. All living beings therefore are identified in time with body and profile and fit them into neat and clean category.
Among Indian philosophical systems the Jaina school of metaphysical investigation of soul has been considered as early system. Its "sentient principle” was well-established as the object of meditation in the eighth B.C.E. during the time period of Pārsva, the predecessor of Mahävira. It has been aptly observed that this principle, conceived by the Jaina thinkers through life experiences, has maintained its continuum with no fundamental change.
1.
Dr. J.C. Sikdar, "Concept of Soul in Jaina Philosophy" in Aspects of Jainology, Vol. III, 1987, p. 96.
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