Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 114

The Sophisticated Stage 93 to a blade of grass."'l Thus the earlier form of the Vaiseșika philosophy which was known to the earlier Jain thinkers was materialistic. In fact, the original purpose of the Vaiseșika (and also of the Nyāya which accepts the doctrines of the Vaiseșika) was to offer a scientific explanation regarding the origin and nature of the world as a composite of eternal, unalterable, causeless atoms. The early philosophers of these schools confined themselves to a classification and discussion of the worldly things excluding God from their systems, while the later commentators, considering this to be a defect, supplied the omission. The fundamental textbooks of the two schools, Vaiseșika and Nyāyā Sūtras, originally did not accept the existence of God; it was not still a subsequent period that the two systems changed to theism. Although the later Nyāya-Vaiseșika conception of the Supreme Being has been strongly refuted by the Jain logicians, the scientific formulations of Jainism derived some of their main impulses from the Nyāya-Vaiseșikas.
It is to be remembered in this connection that in the earlier Jain texts the philosophical doctrines of the non-Jains are represnted as Pūrvapakşa, i.e., views of the opponents, and as such they are reproduced with sufficient distortion in their contents. Later Jain writers, however, treat the views of their opponents with greater skill and competence and also with a purely academic approach. It is due to the fact that, historically speaking, Jainism has the great fortune of being eventually represented by a galaxy of great logicians who in philosophical sophistication could easily compete with the most sophisticated of their rivals.
Jain Atheism
The Jains admit the existence of numerous gods. But none of these gods are eternal. Their lives must come to an end as soon as their merit is exhausted. The Jain gods are embodied souls, just like men or animals, differing from them in degree, not in kind. Accordingly, the functions of a Supreme God, as Lord or Ruler of the world, cannot be attributed to them. Following up their theoretical views on this point, the Jains have strenously combated, and denounced the fallacies by which the Nyāya-Vaiseșikas tried to prove the existence of an eternal and omniscient God as the Creator and Ruler of all things. The essence of the Nyāya-Vaiseșika argument, which will be elaborated
ISBE, XLV, pp. 237-38, 342-43.