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it is well known, there are surely omniscient persons in this universe. In this work, the main purpose of Samantabhadra was to establish the existence of such a person, and that only the Jain tirthunkaras are such people.22 They have become omniscient through their own efforts to destroy all karma. But why must they exist for us? What is the reason for their existence for ordinary persons like us? The liberated soul has no interest in things in this world. Therefore they do not give us any bliss. Our happiness as well as misery is all the result of our own activities. But we naturally have the curiosity to know our predestination. And the tīrthaņkaras know that all matter that occurs, has occurred, and will occur in the future in this universe. Their knowledge must therefore include whether or not we can liberate ourselves; something which ordinary people cannot recognize (see the 100th verse of the ĀM). So the Jain omniscient exist, in a sense, to satisfy our curiosity to know whether we are bhavya or abhavya. U
ENDNOTES
See P.S. Jaini, "Bhavyatva and Abhavyatva, a Jaina Doctrine of Predestination," in Mahāvīra and his Teachings, ed. A.N. Upadhye et al., Bombay, 1977:102.
2 Dr. P.S. Jaini, in his article mentioned above, stated that the Jaina Āgamas abound in references to thc terms bhavya and abhavya. We cannot find bhavya or bhavva, the Prakrit world for bhavya in the Agamas. K.K. Dixit shows this word appearing in the Prajñāpanāsūtra and gives the meaining of, capable of attaining moksa (Jaini, Ontology, Ahmedabad, 1971:52). But in the text we have only the form of bhavya, but not bhavva. Of course the Prakrit word is found in such philosophical works as the Pravacanasāra, as we shall see later.
3 See note 2.
4 Naturallly, there are also other Jaina literatures dealing with the bhavya and abhavya. For those of a philosophical nature, see Jainendra Siddhāta Koša, cd. Jinedra Varņi (1985, Delhi).
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