Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

Page 150

The Sophisticated Stage 129
As we have seen above, the early Jain philosophers divided all living beings into immovable and movable ones. The immovable ones are of three kinds---earth-lives, water-lives, and plants. Each of these three categories is again subdivided into subtle and gross from the view-point of appearance and into developed and undeveloped from the
int of condition. This also holds good in the case of movable beings like fire-lives or water-lives. The gross and fully developed plants are of two kinds—those having one body in common and those having their individual bodies. To the former category belong guccha or shrubly plants, i.e. those from the single root or bulb of which come forth many stalks, e.g. irtaka or Solanun Melongena; gulma or shrubs which are similar to the preceding class but which bring forth twigs or stems, instead of stalks, e.g. navamālikā or Jasminum Sambac; latā, i.e. creepers as lotus, pandanus, etc., valli or creeping plants, as gourds, piper betel, etc.; and tļņa i.e. grass. Palms, plants or knotty stems or stalks, mushrooms, water-plants, annual-plants and herbs are called plants possessing severally their own bodies. Those plants of which many have one body in common are of many kinds. A list of them is given in the Uttaradhyayana. Reference has already been made to the classification of beings with organic bodies on the basis of the number of senses they possess. Animals are broadly divided into invertebrate and vertebrate, the latter beings classified into aquatic, terrestrial and aerial. And finally there are men.
As regards the origin of plant life, the Sūyagada: refers to the seed as its material cause. At the same time it is stated that the souls which on account of their Karma are to be born as trees were previously embodied in earth whence they are transferred by their Karma to the seed which brings forth the tree. Here, however, the extraneous graft of the Karma elements does not obscure the empiric knowledge. “According to the seed and place (of growth of these plants some beings-born in earth, originated in earth and grown in earth, having in it their birth, origin and growth, being impelled by their Karma, and coming forth in it on account of their Karma, grow
ing there in particles of earth, the origin of various things-come · forth as trees. These living beings feed on the liquid substance of
1XXXVI, 93-106. 2ibid, 171-202. $II. 3.