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The Path of Arhat : A Religious Democracy
soul and (2) 'Sarnsärins', worldly, not liberated. The latter are further classified as 'Tras' ( mobile ), 'Sthavara' (immobile ) and 'Nigoda', i. e., dormant and lost souls with a common body and respiration, representing the lowest stage of existence. 'Tras' ( mobile ) are at a higher level and are classified in accordance with the sense-organs possessed by them, viz. - (1) Those with two senses of touch and taste.
(2) Those having three senses of touch, taste and sight.
(3) Those having four senses of touch, taste, sight and smell.
(4) Those having five senses of touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. The 'Sthavara' ( Immobile ) have only tactual sensation. They are in the bodies of earth, water, fire, air and vegetables. Jaina seers have gone much deeper into this question and have given detailed enumeration of the number of Jīvas in different categories of immotile life.
Such a minute and detailed study of living beings has a great significance as it reveals not only a metaphysical insight but also a highly ethical object of putting emphasis on the inherent potentiality of every type of life to achieve the highest. It thereby shows that every type of life is entitled to protection. One cannot do better than quoting Prof. Zimmer who has lauded this aspect in the following words :
“The systematization of the forms of life in Jainism is anything but primitive. It is quaint and archaic indeed, yet pedantic and extremely subtle and represents a fundamentally scientific conception of the world. In fact one is owed by the glimpse that it gives of the long history of human thought - a view much longer and more imposing than that is cherished by our western humanists and academic historians with their little story about Greeks and Renaissance.
Twenty-fourth Tirthaükara Mahāvīra was roughly a contemporary of Thales and Anaxagoras, the earliest of the standard line of Greek philosophers; and yet the subtle, complexthorough-going analysis and the classification of the features of
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