Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 82

REALITY
innumerable pradeśas.' It is not all pervasive. 'By contraction and expansion of its pradeśas a soul is capable of occupying varying proportions of the countless pradeśas of the universe, just like the flame of a lamp whose light can fill a small room as well as a big hall.” As has been observed by Umāsvāti : 'If the space is divided into innumerable parts, the size of a soul can be so small as to occupy one or more of these parts' One part should not be confined to one pradeśa but it should be taken as having innumerable pradeśas, since the innumerability of the spatial pradeśas is of innumerable kinds. In special cases the size of a single soul can fill the whole universe. 'By the contraction and expansion of pradeśas, the soul occupies space like the light from a lamp.' It can occupy the smallest possible body, viz., that of a bacterium or the biggest body of a great fish (mahāmaccha). The soul becomes equal in extent to a small or a large body by contraction and expansion.' This view about the size of the soul is bitterly criticised by the other philosophers of India. No school of Indian philosophy but Jainism regards the soul as equal in extent to the body it occupies.
Such souls are infinite in number, but there are two broad divisions, viz., worldly souls and liberated souls. The worldly souls are further divided onto two classes : mobile (trasa) and immobile (sthāvara). The mobile souls are again divided into five-sensed, four-sensed, three-sensed and two-sensed jīvas. The immobile souls are divided into five categories: those living in the bodies of earth, water, fire, air and vegetable. The following table will show the classification:
1. Ibid., V. 7-8. 2. Tattvārtha-sūtra, II. 14. 3. Asankhveyabhāgādine jīvanām --Tattvārtha-sútra, V.15. 4. Pradeśasaṁhāruusuir gübhyāṁ pradīpavat---Tattvärtha-sūtra, V. 16. 5. Dravya-sangraha. 10. 6. Sarisărino miktāśca - Tattvärtha-sútra, II. 10. 7. Ibid., II. 12.