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SOME POSITIVE JAINA ARGUMENTS..
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this omniscience is proved as belonging to Buddha and not to others, only because Buddha alone has propounded the doctrine of soullessness.146
(B) Argument from Inferability (anumeyatva) It was perhaps Samantabhadra, who for the first time, tried to prove the existence of omniscience on the basis of an argument based on inferability (anumeyatva). In formulating this argument Samantabhadra perhaps had in mind the criticisms of the doctrine of omniscience made by the famous commentator of Mimāṁsā, Śibara Svāmi. While explaining the significance of codanā sūtra (i.e., dharma's purpose is injunction for its sole authority)147, Śabara Svāmi says : “Vedic injunction alone, and nothing else, is authoritative in matters of past, present and future, subtie, remote and intervenient objects."148 Thus, he closes the door of inferability with regard to such matters as knowledge of dharma.
Samantabhadra does not accept this and he says : "the existence of an omniscient being is established from the fact that to some beings, invisible things liku atons, things or per - sons remote in time and place become known as objects of direct perception."149 This knowledge could not have been derived through the senses because there is no sense-object contact. This leads to the inference that the things must have been known in some non-sensuous way.
Kumārila, however, tries to refute the above contention of Samantabhadra by showing that no pramāņa can prove the existence of omniscience; on the contrary, his non-existence
146 śāntarakṣita, Ibid., 3337-3340. The Buddhists think that omni
science is nothing other than the clearest cognition of the 'soul-lessness' of all things, for which they think that 'cover of afflictions'
should be removed. 147 Jaimini, Mimāṁsā-sūtra, I. 1.2. 148 Sabara-bhasya, I. 1.2. 149 Samantabhadra, Apta-mimāṁsā, 5.
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