Jaina Ontology

Author(s): K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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JAINA ONTOLOGY
a list of nine increasingly nobler life-activities is drawn up and we are informed as to how many of them are possible-of-achievement-in-next-birth for a member of this or that class of living beings. Lastly, about certain particularly noble personages and certain particularly auspicious things (e. g. tīrthankara=the higher authority on matters religious and spiritual), cakravartī (world conqueror), 14 cakravartiratnas (jewels in possession of a world-conqueror) we are told as to which particular classes of living beings they could possibly have belonged to in their previous birth.
These are the Prajñāpanā passages which deal with what might be called - in some sense or other – the bodily activities undertaken by a living being.
(3) Cogntive Activities Several chapters of Prajñāpanā are devoted to the problems related to cognitive activities and we take them one by one.
(i) The chapter 15th (viz. Indriyapada) in its major parts contains information about the physical make-up of sense-organs but it also raises certain questions that are of cognitive sigoificance. Thus we are here told that the object of visual senseorgan does not touch it, that of auditory senseorgan does touch it, while that of another sense-organ "touches it and also enters it.' Then we are told about the minimum and maximum distances that can possibly lie in between a particular sense-organ and its object, then about the relative numerical strength of the minimum and maximum periods characterising the cognition had through different sense-organs. Lastly, we are told that sensory cognition is completed through the following five stages : vyañjanāvagraha (initial grasping of the object), arthāvagraha (final grasping of the object), īhā (cogitation), avāya (determination), dhāraņā (retention) (the first stage being not possible in the case of cognition had through visual sense-organ — or of that had through manas).
(ii) In the chapter 29th (viz. Upayogapada) u payoga (i. e. cognition) is subdivided into sakāra (i. e. determinate) and nirakāra (i. e. indeterminate) and we are told that the sākāra upayoga of a samyagdrsti is to jñāna, that of a mithyādīşti ajñāna (there being five types of jñāna, three of ajñāna). On the other hand, nirakāra u payoga is to be called darśana (there being four types of it). Here we are also informed as to which types of jñāna, ajñāna and darśana are possible in the different classes of living
beings.
(iii) The chapter 30th (viz. Pasyattāpada) almost repeats the basic information contained in the chapter 29th — thus suggesting that paśyatta is virtually a synonym for upayoga. But there is one difference; the lowest type of jñāna, the lowest type of ajñāna and the lowest type of darśana are