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Mati in the Tattvārthādhigamasūtra
Dr. Eiichi Yamaguchi Ariake National College of Technology,
Omuta. Fukuoka. Japan
Introduction
The first extant Jaina work, which systematized all of the early Jaina teachings, is the Tattvārıhādhigamasutra (TAS) of Umāsvāmi. This work, particularly in the leading sections, advances many topics on epistemology and metaphysics, and emphasises an exceptional concern with the source of cognition and the foundations of knowledge from the Jaina perspective.
The word mati is used in Jaina philosophy mainly in the sense of a special type of knowledge which can incorporate such meanings as sense perception, memory, recognition, cogitation and inference. At the same time, translators of this text have employed the term mati in the narrowest meaning of sense perception alone. In this paper we will try to correlate the term mati with manana, the third stage of the fourfold scheme (darśana, śruvana, manana, and vijñānu or nidhidhyāsana), which was prevalent in Upanisadic circles and referred to in the Ācārangasūtru. In this paper I shall descuss mali with special reference to TAS, its commentaries, and other Jaina texts.
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