Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

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

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202 Jain Philosophy in Historical Outlinie
transcendental realization and ātman, the ultimate principle of consciousness-to generate true knowledge. The advocates of equal competence of sense-organs and non-sensuous organs are the followers of Sāmkhya-Yoga, Nyāya-Vaišeșika, Mimāmsā and the Vaibhāșika and Sautrāntika schools of Buddhism. The non-sensuous organ which is expected to substantiate the knowledge acquired through the senseorgans is antaḥkarana, according to the Sāmkhya-Yoga, and manas according to the Nyāya-Vaišeşika, Vaibhāsika and Sauträntika. The Jains also belong to this group since they maintain that sense-organs which are competent to generate true knowledge and add that each of the two non-sensuous organs-manas and ātman-is capable of independently generating true knowledge.
The Nyāya-Vaiseșika and Mīmāmsā subscribe to the doctrine of Arambhavāda or novel creation according to which there is a distinction between cause and effect, the latter being a new creation, non-existent before its emergence. The atoms constituting the gross physical world are by themselves beginningless, endless and changeless as the cause, but the effect produced by them is of a totally different character having beginning, end and change. The SāmkhyaYoga insists upon Pariņāmavāda which is just the reverse of the former. Here effect is conceived as the modification of the cause. There is no distinction between cause and effect. A particular effect exists in its cause. The gross world is nothing but the perceptible modification of a material cause. The Buddhists believe in the Pratītya-samutpādavāda, or the theory of dependent origination which conceives in its own distinctive manner the series of qualities and attributes that originate and perish, but it posits no permanent cause in the form of the substrata of these qualities and attributes. The Vedāntists believe in the doctrine of Vivarta-vāda, the theory of illusory modification of the eternal Brahman, according to which the cause is only real and the effect unreal or imaginary, a mere illusory appearance. The Jain tendency is towards pariņāmavāda in which an intimate relation between the cause and the effect is emphasised.
So far as the theory of knowledge is concerned, the Jains alongwith the Prābhākara-Mimāmsakas, Vedāntists and the Buddhist followers of Vijñānavāda are advocates of the self-revelatory character of cognition. The Sāmkhya-Yoga and Nyāya-Vaiseșika philosophers and also the Kumārila-Mimāmsakas on the other hand regard cognition as not-self-revelatory. They hold that cognition is by nature perceptible but not self-perceptible. As to the nature of the