Jain Journal 2001 10

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

Page 27

ABU BAKR AL-RAZI AND JAIN PHILOSOPHY
GOPAL STAVIG, U.S.A. Abu Bakr al-Razi (864-924, known to the West as Rhazes) is recognized as the most distinguished Islamic medical clinician of the middle ages. He authored an encyclopedia of medical information, which contains a number of selections from Indian and Greek sources and mentioned Indian physicians like Caraka and Sushruta. Al-Razi was also a writer of philosophy who was inspired to some extent by Plato.
There is a strong resemblance between Al-Razi's and the Jaina theory of the primary metaphysical categories. Al-Razi' taught that there are five eternal metaphysical principles which are : God the creator, soul, matter, space and time. In support of these categories al-Razi mentioned that perceptual sense experience presupposes a material substratum; groupings of perceived objects require space which is the locus that matter subsists in; perception of change implies time; existence of living beings indicates a soul; and living beings endowed with the faculty of reason necessitates the existence of an intelligent Creator. These concepts approximate the Jaina doctrine developed by Kundakunda (c. 1. 200) in the Pancāstikāyasāra, that the six fundamental eternal categories are; soul, matter, space, time, motion and rest. In addition both al-Razi and the Jainas drew an important distinction between infinite absolute universal space and finite relative localized space and between absolute eternal universal time and relative measurable time. They both emphasized that absolute space and time exists independently of all empirical objects. Space is infinite providing a receptacle for matter to subsist in. Also, al-Razi and the Jainas prescribe an atomic theory of eternal matter composed of the four elements, earth, water, fire and air. Al-Razi distinguished between the living and acting principles (God and soul) from the nonliving (matter, space and time). Similarly the Jainas differentiated the
George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co., 1927), i, p. 609; R.A. Jairazbhoy, Foreign Influence in Ancient India (Bombay : Asia Publishing House, 1963), p. 174; Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University, 1983), p. 33.