Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 91

METAPHYSICS : XI. THE FIVE BODIES
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innermost body. It is called the karma body (kõrmunu śarīru), and it is found in all embodied or mundane, unliberated souls. The next grosser kind of body is the magnetic (taijasa) body: this also is extremely fine and invisible, and it is found in all unliberated souls. Added to these two bodies, common to all souls except those of siddhas in moksha, there are the vaikriyika and audlarika bodies--the former is the plastic sheath of angels and denizens of hell, and the latter the body of human and other mundane beings. Like Christianity, Jainism gives to angels and devils the same constitution and origin. The angels-gods or denizens of hell-are not born like mortals. They simply rise into their conditions
-narake devānām upapātah (Tuttvārtha-sūtra, ii, 35). Another interesting comparison may be instituted between Christianity and the very first Jaina principle with which this book opens : jīvo ti ... kammasamjutto," the soul in the world is in combination with karma” (Pañchüstikaya, 27). This is the Christian doctrine of original sin, and it has some analogy to the scientific doctrine of heredity. The soul almost automatically chooses the body which it best deserves by its total condition in regard to the karinic matter of passions, affections, tendencies past and present.
Thus Jainism gives three bodies to all souls on this side of liberation, or moksha. The karmic and the magnetic bodies are common to all; the angels have in addition vaikriyika, and the other souls audarika, or our ordinary physical bodies, derived from the mother's womb. It may be remarked that the karmic and magnetic bodies are so subtle (finer than