Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

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The Sophisticated Stage 95
God cannot be described as creator since the effect is conditioned by space and time. Coming to the Mahāyāna, we find that Nāgārjuna denies the possibility of the world being created by God. Şantideva in his Bodhicaryāvatāral refuses to admit any omniscient and omnipotent God as creator, and his polemics are directed against the theism of the later Nyāya-Vaišeşikas. The same holds good in the case of Sāntarakṣita in whose Tattvasmgraha we come across pointed answers to the logical grounds on which the theists, evidentally the Nyāya-Vaišesikas wanted to prove the existence of God. The Jains also launched a vigorous logical compaign against theism and the most sophisticated arguments and hair-spelitting analysis are met with in the polemic of Gunaratna which was directed against the NyāyaVaiseșika probans for the inference of God.
It should be remembered in this connection that although the NyāyaVaiseșika arguments in support of theism had been the main target of attack of the atheists, God had originally no place in the Nyāyasūtra of Gautama and in the Vaiseșika-sutra of Kaņāda. The Nyāya and Vaiseșika were independent in their origin, but in the course of history the two systems were amalgamated. Nyāya was the science of argumentation, predominantly intellectualistic and analytical. The fact is borne out by other designations like hetu-vidyā or the science of causes which are sometimes applied to it. Special attention is paid in this system to the questions of formal logic. The word Vaiseșika is derived from Viseșa, which means difference, and the doctrine is so designated because, according to it, diversity is at the root of the universe. The purpose of the original Vaišeșika was purely scientific, and hence materialistic, to find out the basis of substance which is the substratum of qualities and actions and the material cause of composite things. In order to understand the basis of substance the Vaiseșikas developed the atomic theory. The inference by which they sought to prove the existence of atoms is like this: Whatever is produced must be made up of parts. Therefore if the parts of a composite thing be separated, we shall pass from larger to smaller, from smaller to still smaller, and from there to the smallest parts which cannot be further divided in any way. This indivisibe and minutest parts are called paramānus or atoms. An atom cannot be produced, because it has no parts, and to produce means to combine parts. Nor can it be destroyed for to destory a thing is to break it up into its
IX, 119ff.