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is obviously a universal law comprehensible to reason or intuition rather than a mere inducement to natural inclinations It is equally obvious that the law is radically different from any external pressure or the pressure of desire or temptation Its obligation is in some sense self-imposed or self-accepted, i e, the will chooses its objects as indicated by the rational approval of the whole personality rather than as impelled by the fragmentary and irrational force of desires
The orthodox Vedic school of the Mimāmsakas held that the moral rule or Dharma is of the nature of a Vedic prescription revealing a good The good has the sense of something valued, something desired as well as approved, an artha Vedic prescriptions are at once verbal commands and activating causes They are held to be of an eternal and impersonal nature Their disregard generates evil while their acceptance may produce merit or destroy sins
This traditional Vedic conception of the moral law is essentially the conception of following one's duties understood in terms of an impersonal and immemorial social tradition The doctrine of an eternal and impersonal ethos is only a metaphysical projection of this socio-ethical doctrine which is adapted to uphold and ritualise the obligatory forms and structures of a varied and concrete social tradition Jainism rejects this notion of revelation as the source of moral knowledge just as it rejects sensation and calculation as the means of discovering what is good for man The source of morality or caritra is in knowledge and faith which are the natural powers of the soul The source of evil is the Karmic obscuration of these powers The ultimate form of this knowledge is Kevala-jñāna and from that arises the tradition of scriptural knowledge or Śrutajñāna Of these, Śruta-jñāna is verbal knowledge, conceptual and indirect On this view right action depends on right knowledge ie, what we ought to do comes to be indirectly a function of what there is In fact, the function of knowledge is only to remove the obstructions in the way of action taking place in accordance with the nature of its subject as well as its direct and indirect objects Dharnia or
