Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

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A Comparative Study 191 object contact on account of Yoga or special competence of soul (visiṣta-atma-sakti).
Jainism and Mimāmsā
The Mimāmsā occupies a unique position in Indian philosophical systems. Like the Yoga, the Mīmāmsā is also an inheritance of primitive culture, of primitive rituals and ceremonies designed to influence the course of nature in favour of a fruitful and happy human existence. The aim of the Mīmāmsaka philosophers was to revive the undifferentiated pre-class collective life as the precondition for the development and efficacy of primitive magical beliefs and rituals. That is why it upholds the aspects of Vedic ritualism, supplies a philosophical justification of the beliefs on which this ritualism depended and gives a methodology of interpretation with the help of which these could be properly performed. The Mīmāmsaka insistence on the infallibility and authority of the Vedas is in fact nothing but a wholehearted regard to the inherited traditional knowledge of the past of which the Vedas are the symbol.
It appears that the original purpose of the Mimämsä as well as of Jainism and Buddhism was the same-to revive the primitive way of life, simple, unsophisticated and collective,-as the way out of the crisis of class society. But while Jainism and Buddhism, being disgusted with the corrupt practices of the advanced and sophisticated sacrificial cults and rituals made a total denunciation of all these, the Mimāmsā atrempted to revive their original form and connect them with the original values and purposes for which they stood in the days of yore. Unfortunately most of the modern scholars-even great scholars like Max-müller, Keith or Radhakrishnan-have missed this point, as a result of which they have been baffled with the inherent puzzles of the Mimāmṣā doctrine.
The greatest puzzle is Mīmāmsā atheism which is in common with Jainism and Buddhism. How can a system which has based itself on the Vedas become atheistic? The Mimamsakas themselves answer this question by saying that they are only concerned with the rituals of the Vedas to be performed according to the proper rules which contain eternal truth and not with any other motive. The primitive magical basis of the Vedic rituals is sufficiently clear which has been demonstrated by all competent Vedic scholars. This magical basis, in spite of the grafting upon the primitive rituals the later class-interest of the priests, has not been completely stamped out. In primitive