Jain Journal 2004 01

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

Page 26

R. BHATTACHARYA: JAIN SOURCES
five elements instead of four, is attested, however obliquely, by the Mahābhārata (Mbh.). The following verse (Śantiparvan, 267.4) may be cited as a case in point:
151
yebhyaḥ srjati bhūtāni kāle bhāvapracoditaḥ/ mahābhūtāni pañceti tānyāhur bhūtacintakāḥ//
These (elements) from which Time, moved by the desire of bringing forth physical forms, creates all beings, are called 'the five great elements' by those who think (in terms) of the elements. 16
In another passage in the Mbh. we read an account of cosmogony beginning and ending with five elements.17 The word bhūtacintā also occurs in the Suśrutasaṁhitā (SSam).18
Gunaratna (fourteenth century) most probably has this school of bhutapañcakavādin-s in mind when he speaks of "some sections of the Carvaka-s who consider space as the fifth element." "19 The nastika-s in general are said to have believed in the existence of four elements only. However, every other Jain writer, right from Haribhadra, Hemacandra and Prabhacandra, down to Vidyanandin and Vādidevasūri mention the Lokayatikas as bhūtacatuṣṭayavādin-s.20 But none of them refers to any other school as 'another section of the Cārvāka-s' as Gunaratna does. In this respect he stands alone among the Jains. The fact is that the bhutapañcakavādin-s belong to another materialist school. They are not just cārvākaikadesiya-s.
The difference of the two schools of materialists is not confined to the difference in the number of elements (four or five?) admitted by them. There was another difference in their attitudes towards puruşakāra (lit. manliness), human endeavour vis-a-vis daiva or niyati, destiny or fate, yadṛcchā (chance, accident), etc.
The elementalists in the Mbh. are shown to be accidentalists (non-believers in causality) and hence inactivists, since human efforts are futile:
devā manuṣyā gandharvāḥ piśācāsurarākṣasāḥ/ sarve svabhāvataḥ sṛṣṭā na kriyābhyo na kāraṇāt//21
Elsewhere in the Mbh. the word svābhāva is used to suggest denial of causality, animittatā." It is in this sense that svabhāva recurs