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THE AGE OF LOGIC
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to the forefront relatively late. These problems too Kundakunda treats in a commendable fashion. These sides of Kundakunda's endeavour are to be kept in mind if we are to properly evaluate the performance he put up in Samayasāra. For they make one thing clear, viz. that Kundakunda was well acquainted with the traditional Jaina philosophical views and also with the tendency towards Anekāntavāda that had lately emerged. And yet he also thought it proper to tread a somewhat new path on which he virtually remained a lone traveller. But let us try to be fair to Kundakunda. For what was his running theme in Samayasāra had already found accasional expression in Pañcāstikāya and Pravacanasāra; not only that, it had found expression there in a form that would not sound particularly jarring to an average Jaina ear. This means that Kundakunda's innovation somehow had its roots in the traditinal world-thought.
Thus in Samayasāra Kundakunda was going to emphasize that what happens to a soul on account of its association with matter is nothing essential to the nature of soul. The question was touched upon in Pancastikāya vv, 60-69 which seek to throw light on the mutual relationship obtaining between a soul conceived as a spiritual entity and a karma conceived as a physical entity. Here already Kundakunda had come out with the idea that a soul is the main cause (karta) of what happens to itself and an occasioning cause (nimitta) of what happens to a karma while a karma is similarly the main cause what happens to itself and an occasioning cause of what happens to a soul. Again, here in w. 154-59 it was clearly laid down that all inflow of karma - good or bad -- is something alien to a soul while jñāna and darśana are alone what are essential to it; in this connection it was pointedly made out (vv. 160-61) that samyaktva, jñāna, cāritra are mokşamarga only from the practical standpoint while the real mokşamārga consists of just jñāna and darśna - that is, of those two essential properties to a soul. Similarly, in Pravacanasāra-jñeyadhikara vv. 92-93 it was declared that a soul does nothing to karmic matter while in 68-70 that it does nothing to the matter of the form of body, manas or speech (the idea being that whatever it does it does to itself). Lastly, in Pravacanasāra-jñānādhikāra vv. 56-58 it was argued that knowledge had with the help of sense-organs is parokșa (lit. had through something alien to itself) while in v. 76 that pleasure had with the help of sense-organs is actually pain. All this contained the standpoint of Samayasāra in a germ form and was yet not much far from the traditional standpoint. For it was after all a traditional position that a soul's association with matter is something accidental and that therefore the account of a soul's own nature must contain no reference to matter. But the tradition also emphasized that a worldly soul is such a soul precisely because of its association with matter and that therefore the account of a worldly soul must contain reference to
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