Jainism Some Essays

Author(s): A S Gopani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 28

Jaina Religion
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the theory of the ether concerning this world is a supposition contrived to make room for the Jaina Conception about the habitat of the Siddhas. Be that as it may, it is certa.n that the Jaina theories formulating the principles of motion, stationariness, the size of the soul, the ether and the habitat of the liberated souls, are interlocked. There is no doubt that one becoms void without the other and also that these are quite characteristic of Jainism only.
The Principle of Non-soul
Emancipation is the objective of metaphysics of any religious system and it is a relative term as it denotes a thing to be emancipated from, If these is sam āra, there must also be freedom from it. If there is no samsāra, there will be no emancipation also. Is the conception of samsāra possible in the case of sentient beings if we believe it to be abounding in them only and nothing else ? This question gave rise to necessity that there is substance other than the sentient being. The Upanis dic sages theorized tha the samsāra existed in the case of living, sentient beings because of their neseience only. Nescience
not an independent substance but it is the perverted knowledge of the being. It is because of his that the being experiences the existence of soul and matter as different from it. Really speaking there is nothing else and nothing more than the soul. When the perverted knowledge disappears, the soul identifies itself with everything and then it finds nothing existing besides and beyond it. This very phenomenon is liberation itself. In other words, there is nothing else and nothing more than the soul in the opinion of the Upanisadic seers. But Mahāvira envisioned that there was no reason for the soul to display nescience or ignorance, if its very nature is constituted of knowledge and nothing else for all time and at all places. This modificatory change of the soul cannot be purely baseless. The cause of the perverted knowledge of the soul is Karma and it is a separate entity quite independent of the soul. This led him to enunciate the theory of the non-soul, that is to say, matter. The union of the soul and the matter results in the birth of nescience or ignorance. The significance of the exertion for liberation lies in removing this.
Mahāvira fell upon this discovery of the substance called matter when he was in search of a reason that could rationally explain the existeence of the samsāra which is a bondage. The subtle thinking in regard to the substance named non-soul or Ajiva centring round the atom is nowhere to be found except in Jainism, Thoughts on the divisions and subdivision of the material particles responsible for giving rise to concrete and abstract things such as Karmas, language, mind, sense-organs, body and the like are the distinguishing features of Jainism only. There are scientists who have started believing that the Jaina seers were far more advanced in their theories of atom than what any scintists of today can boast of.