Laghutattvasphota

Author(s): Amrutchandracharya, Padmanabh S Jaini, Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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He seeks to resolve their incompatibility by recourse to a new understanding of the term sākāra and nirākāra. The obscurity of these two canonical terms is probably responsible for the controversy that surrounds jñāna and darśana. During the post-canonical or scholastic period, when the Jaina logicians were defending theories of cognition against other systems, the terms darśana and jñāna seem to have gained their current meanings, namely, 'indeterminate' and 'determinate', respectively. Certain Jaina writers opined that darśana was 'indeterminate intuition' because it cognised the 'universal' (samanya), while jñāna was 'determinate knowledge' because it cognised the 'particular' (vise şa). 50 But this idea was found to be incompatible with the fundamental Jaina position that an existent is both 'universal' and 'particular', and that no act of cognition could be considered valid unless both these inseparable aspects were cognised. Darśana and jñāna therefore had to cognize both the 'universal' and the 'particular aspects. This led such Jaina ācāryas as Virasena to redefine the two cognitions. Darśana was defined as the 'internal' cognition of the 'self', while jñāna cognised 'external' objects.51 The two could thus operate together freely, each having its own sphere of actions within the same consciousness.
Amṛtacandra's affiliation with the Digambara tradition is well known; it is further confirmed by his statement that, in the case of the Jina, darśana and jñāna operate 'non-successively' (aparyayeṇa), since there is total destruction of all that might obscure his consciousness:
"eka evopayogas te sākāretara bhedataḥ/ jñānadarśanarūpeņa dvitayim gāhate bhuvam//259// samastāvaraṇocchedān nityam eva nirargale/ aparyāyeņa vartete dṛgjñapti visade tvayi//260//
The poet's reasoning in the first part of verse 260 indicates his awareness of the controversy surrounding these two operations of the Jina's consciousness. But there is no clue here to his understanding of the terms sākāra and nirākāra.52 In the 23rd chapter, however, there is one passage which appears to allude to these terms. It speaks of the 'astonishing nature' of the Jina's consciousness, a consciousness which operates by way of 'contraction' and 'expansion' (cit-sankoca-vikāsa-vismayakaraḥ svabhāvaḥ— 587). There is no doubt that the words sankoca and vikāsa here refer to the darśana and jñāna, respectively. Darśana is 'contraction' because it is focused on the self; jñana is 'expansion' because it is turned towards the infinity of external objects. The same idea is conveyed by the expression 'bahir-antarmukha-bhāsa' (367) and the terms 'sāmānya 'and' viseṣa' applied in the last chapter for the two operations of consciousness (citsāmānya-viśeşa-rūpam-607). This interpretation agrees perfectly with the