Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

Page 152

The Sophisticated Stage 131 out of existing matter and in open place. The beings produced in this way are generally sexless. There are beings of manifold origin and birth that grow on the animate or inanimate bodies of various movable or immovable creatures. These beings are fed on the humours of different movables and immovables. For example, the vermin are generated in filthy substances and in the skin of living animals. The same holds good in the cases of different earth-bodied, water-bodied, fire-bodied and air-bodied creatures. Most of the fivesensed beings, however, come into existence by the process of generation, i.e. by male-female union. Thus, the acquatic animals of five organs of sense, viz. fishes, tortoises, crocodiles, Makaras and Gangetic porpoises, are born in this way. As long as they are young they feed on the mothers' humours, but when they grow older they eat plants and also movable and immovable beings. In the same way come into existence the quadrupeds, terrestrial animals with five organs of sense, viz. solidungular animals, as horses, etc., biungular animals, as cows, etc., multiungular animals, as elephants, etc., and animals having toes with nails, as lions, etc. As long as they are young they feed on their mother's milk, but when they grow older they eat plants or movable and immovable beings. Reptiles moving on breast are also produced by union. Some of them come out of the eggs thus produced while others come out as living young ones. As long as they are young, they live on wind, but when they grow older, they eat plants or movable and immovable beings. Five-sensed animals, walking on their arms, viz. iguanas, ichneumons, porcupines, frogs, chamaleons, etc., and also the birds with membranous wings, with feathered wings, with box-shaped wings and with outspread wings, are also born and sustained in the same way. As long as the birds are young, they are hatched by their mother's warmth.
Human embryology is discussed in the first part of the Tandulaveyāliya which also deals with human anatomy, structure of human body, the bodily functions and so on. In scattered passages of t we come across the question of age limit in connection with the reproductive power of men and women, the question of miscarriage, the shape and function of the uterus, the six different ways of joining the bones, the six different kinds of the shape of the body and many other allied subjects. In the Viyāhapannatti we come across the description of the embryo as the product as well as the cause, the function
1 Süya, II. 3.22-36.