Jaina View of Life

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

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Jaina View of Life
new forms in each new birth. Whatever thing manifests in the four praṇas lives and is jiva." The four Prāņas are manifest in ten forms. The Indriya expresses itself in five senses. Bala may refer to the mind, the body and speech. Ayus and Ana are one each. These prānas in all their details need not be present in all organisms, because there are organisms with less than five sense organs. But there must be the four main characteristics. The most perfectly developed souls have all the ten prānas and the lowest have only four. This has a great biological and psychological significance. Comparative psychology points out that in the psycho-physical development of the various animal species at the lower level, the chemical sense which is affected by chemical reaction is the only sense function; and it later becomes the separate sense of teste and smell. Experimental investigations carried by Riley and Forel point out that the chemical sense is used by insects like moths even for mating. Forel has given a topo-chemical theory for explaining the behaviour of bees. As we go higher in the scale of life, the chemical sense plays little part. In birds, sight and smell are well developed. In mammals, we find a higher degree of qualitative discrimination of smell. As we go higher still, we get the variability of adaptation which may be called intelligence.
In the Brahmanas and the oldest Upanisads there is a description of the psyche as consisting of five Pranas. They are regarded as factors of the physico-psychological life. Occasionally, more than five Pranas are mentioned. But still the idea of a permanent self had not shaped itself. In the third Adhyaya of the Bṛhadaranyakopaniṣad Yajnavalkya was asked to explain what happened to a person after the body has been dissolved, and the parts of the psyche has been remitted to the fire and wind. He avoids the discussion and suggests that Karma remains after death." This was a step forward towards
27.
Pañcastikāyasāra, 30.
28. Ranade (R. D.): A Constructive Survey of Upanisadic Philosophy, p. 181, (1926).