Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

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Jain Philosophy in Historical Outline
latter. Sankara's criticism of Jainism occurs in his commentary on the Vedānta Sūtras.' Having given a brief sketch of the seven Jain categories and the doctrine of Syādvāda as Pūrvapakşa, he says that on account of the impossibility of contradictory attributes in one thing the Jain doctrine cannot be accepted. According to him, it is impossible that contradictory attributes such as being and non-being should at the same time belong to one and the same thing. A thing can not be hot and cold at the same time. The cognition that a thing is of more than one nature can not be definite and hence it can not be a source of true knowledge. The doctrine of Syädvāda shows that the means of knowledge, the object of knowledge, the knowing subject and the act of knowledge are all alike indefinite. If that be the case, the Tīrthamkara can not teach with any claim to authority and his followers can not act on a doctrine the matter of which is altogether indeterminate. Agan, if the Jain reasoning be applied to the doctrine of categories, from one view point they have a fixed number, from another unfixed. Since the categories have been described, to call them indescribable involves a contradiction.
Regarding the conception of the non-universality of the self, Sankara refutes the Jain view that the soul has the same size as the body on the ground that as the bodies of different classes of creatures are of different size, it might happen that the soul of a man-which is of the size of the human body—when entering, in consequence of its former deeds, on a new state of existence in the body of an elephant, would not be able to fill the whole of it. The same difficulty would moreover arise with regard to the successive stages of one state of existence-infancy, youth and old age. If it be said that the soul consists of an infinite number of parts capable of undergoing compression in a small body and dilatation in a big one, the question will arise whether the countless particles of the soul may occupy the same place or not. If the former is admitted it follows that the infinite number of particles cannot be contained in a body of limited dimensions, and if the latter is admitted, it follows that since the space occupied by all the particles may be the space of one particle only, and hence the soul must be of minute size. Nor can the doctrine of soul having the same size as the body be satisfactorily established by means of the hypothesis of the successive accession and
II. 2, 33-36.