Jain Journal 2004 01

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

Page 28

R.BHATTACHARYA: JAIN SOURCES
153
Ašvaghoşa and others) is a stumbling block in the way of determining the significance of the word svabhāva in various contexts. But here we are concerned with the indirect evidence of the existence of two schools of materialists in India: one was the proto-materialist trend which seems to have been bhūtapañcakavādin as well as akriyāvādin; the other was the deutro-materialist trend, which was both bhūtacatuştayavādin and kriyāvādin. Both trends appear to have coexisted (if the evidence of Manimekalai is accepted). The protomaterialist trend presumably withered away. It is also probable that it never developed into a full-fledged philosophical system with its own sūtra-work, commentaries, etc. The deutro-materialist trend, on the other hand, evolved from the doctrine of bhūta mentioned in the Sv. Up. 1.2., was preached by Ajita Kesakambala and finally took the shape of the Cärvāka system. The earliest Jain reference to the doctrine of five elements is found in the Vasudevahindi,3 the Mbh. and the SKS, too, record the view of these proto-materialists.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. 2.
See Jacobi in The Jaina Sūtras, Part 2, p. xxiii. I have used the text of the SKS and its commentary by Sīlāňka as given in the MLBD ed. Jacobi's English translation has been cited with some minor changes, e.g. “air' for ākāśa has been replaced by ‘space', for vāyu 'wind' has been replaced by ‘air'. SKSVr, p.9. The lines contain the seeds of materialism and atheism in particular. Lucretius (c. 99-55 BCE) takes this idea as his starting point : Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing. The reason why all mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of things happening on the earth and in the sky with no discernible cause, and these