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THE JAINA GAZETTE
may simultaneously come in contact with varied Bodies etc. If the Nyaya thinker contend that the variedness in the psychical series points to the multiplicity of souls, the Jaina urges that the same line of argument would point to the multiplicity of skies. If it be held that the sky is one, although it gives space to many objects, it may similarly be said that the all-pervasive soul is but one and that the various Bodies etc., touch only its different parts. The Naiyayika says that the varied phenomena e.g., one man is dying, another is being born, a third is actively engaged etc., etc., show that the souls are many. The Jainas contend that if you maintain the doctrine of the all-pervasive soul, the mutually opposed phenomena of death, birth and so on, may prove the one-ness of the soul as well. One piece of sky is being generated in one Pitcher, when another piece of sky is being destroyed in another Pitcher and a third piece of sky continues to exist;just as these phenomena do not prove the multiplicity of the sky, the phenomena of birth, death etc., need not prove the multiplicity of the souls; these are possible even if the soul be one. If it be contended that the Bondage and the Emancipation of the soul would be impossible without the multiplicity of the souls on the ground that in one and the same thing mutually contradictory phenomena are not simultaneously possible, the answer is that a similar line of argument may be put forward to the effect that if sky be confined in one Pitcher, there cannot be any free sky outside it and that if there be free sky anywhere, there cannot be any confined sky anywhere. If it be said that confinement and no-confinement are simultaneously possible in the case of sky because it has parts, we may say that there is no harm in considering the one all-pervasive soul as constituted of different parts and thus atttibuting Bondage and Emancipation simultaneously to it. The Jaina philosophers show in this way that if the soul be supposed to be all-permeating and all-pervading, one need not admit its multiplicity.
The Nyaya thinkers contend that if the soul were not all-pervasive, it could not come in contact with the proper Atoms lying in infinite directions, with the result that no Body Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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