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In Jaina philosophy occurrence and the disappearance of knowledge has a firm relationship with karmas. So the inquiry, that an abhavya cannot have omniscience because the person could not destroy all the karma, naturally arises. The nature of bhavya and abhavya are thought as innate to the soul; this means that such nature is not a result of karma. Here, Pūjyapāda seems to try to show that abhavya has no connection with karma by applying the typical Jaina concept of naya to knowledge. 18
Bhavya and Abhavya in Samantabhadra
The next author we shall examine on the concept of bhavya is the Digambara saint, Samantabhadra. 19 Many works have been attributed to him, but among them the Āptamimāṁsā, as mentioned above, and the Yuktyanuśāsa, Svayambhūstotra, and Ratnākaraṇḍaśrāvācāra. All are important for this philosophical discussion. Again, we cannot specifically find the word abhavya or abhavyatva amoung these texts, but he uses the word bhavya twice in verse eight of the Svayambhūstotra and in verse forty-one of the Ratnākaraṇḍaśrāvācāra the sense of one who has the capability of achieving mokṣa. The former says that a Jaina tīrthaṇkara exists for the bhavya person who has accumulated karmic dust in his soul, and to clean it out as a shining sun for a lotus to bloom. In the latter verse, the author shows that a bhavya with devotion to a Jina will attain happiness. 20 In these two verses bhavya is used as a concept closely related to karmic theory, and are quite similar to the conceptual discussion presented by Kundakunda.
Samantabhadra also discusses this topic elsewhere, although he does not use the word bhavya itself. The ninth chapter of AM consists of five verses dealing with the problem of how to attain mokṣa using knowledge. In the first two verses the author puts forth hypothetical opinions of the opponent schools and the criticism to them from the Jaina perspective.
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