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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM"
in God but do not bestow on Him creatorship, a speculative attribute. Muni Nyāyavijayaji, a Jaina Ācārya, reasoned Jainism is not only a theistic but also a monistic philosophy."
The distinctions in philosophies can be ultimately traced to distinctions in methods of speculations, adopted by the different schools. Solutions of philosophical problems, like:
What is the ultimate cause of the world? Does God exist? What is the nature of God? It cannot be obtained by observation.
The early Mīmāṁsakas are silent about God and later ones reject the proof of God. According to them perception, inference and scriptures do not prove God, and universe having neither beginning nor end does not require any creator.
Sāṁkhya do not believe in God as the creator of the world, but they believe in the authoritativeness of the Vedas. According to them, the assumption of God is ontologically irrelevant and logically repulsive.
The Yoga system, one of orthodox Indian philosophy, is essentially consisting of ancient rites and magical practices and is not any specific philosophy. The concept of God is an extraneous graft on it.
God had originally no place in the Nyāyasūtra and in the Vaiseșika-sūtra of Kaņāda. The Nyāya and Vaiseșika believe in God who is one, omnipresent, eternal and everlasting abode of wisdom, omniscient, the dispenser of the fruits of the good and bad actions of beings and who consigns them to hell and heaven.
Though Sāṁkhya, Yoga, Nyāya and Vaišeșika based their theories on ordinary human experience and reasoning, they did
Muni Shri Nyāyavijayaji, “Jaina philosophy and religion", 1998, P-32
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