Book Title: Jain Philosophy
Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Agamoday Samiti

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Page 269
________________ 240 there is being of itself, and non-being of other things, which means that a thing can be fully known only by knowing what it is and what is not, Sankara in fact, creates a man of straw, inputes to him imaginary doctrines, and by refuting them, he knocks him down. That is his glory. I shall now state a few of the first principles of the Jain philosophy. Its first teaching is that the universe is not merely a congeries of substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra-cosmic creator, but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its very constitution. Law is not to be understood in the sense of a rule of action prescribed by authority, but as a proposition which expresses the constant or regular order of certain phenomena, or the constant mode of action of things or beings under certain definite circuinstances. It is not a couinand, but a formula to which things or beings conform precisely, and without exception under definite relations, internal and external. Jainisin, therefore, is not a theistic system in the sense of belief in the existence of a God as the Creator and Ruler of the universe; and still the highest being in the Jain view is a person, and not impersonal, characterless, quality less being. All that there is in or of the universe may be classified under two Heads: (1) Sentient, animate or conscious beings (a, liberated beings; b, embodied beings); and (2) Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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