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INTRODUCTION
LXXIII
The socio-ethical aspect of this doctrine is so apparent that one is tempted to compare it with the doctrine of three gunas of the Sāmkhya system, which in their both classical and popular aspects have been used-for explaining the socio-ethical inequalities;' perhaps Bhandarkar referred to this very similarity. The similarity is very striking, but the dissimilar details should not be ignored. The three guias are the constituents of Prakrti and not of Purusa, the spirit, who has come to look upon himself by mistake as their agent; sometimes they are looked upon as limitations through which the absolute becomes the individual soul. This fascinating Sãmkhya terminology has influenced later Vedānta represented by works like Pañcadas'ī where Prakrti plays the rôle of Brahman's reflection possessed of three gunas, elements of good, indifferent and bad, corresponding to three kinds of actions. There is similarity between upayogas and guņas so far as their moral effects are concerned. As distinguished from the Sāmkhya view of guuas, the üpāyogas belong to the spirit or the Jīva according to Jainism; S'uddhopayoga though comparable with sattva is not- a positive spiritual something, but only immunity from the remaining two upayogas; in the Sāmkhya system, gunas are the ingredients of Prakrti, which in turn represents an equipoise of guyas; but in Jainism upayogas are manifested by the soul because of its being associated with karmic matter.
5. THE THEORY OF OMNISCIENCE.—Really speaking the soul (ātman) is the knower and essentially an embodiment of knowledge (II, 35; I, 28 etc.). Knowledge is the self, and knowledge cannot subsist anywhere else than in the self; self, and knowledge are coextensive, neither less nor more (I, 23); if the self is smaller, then knowledge being insentient cannot function; if larger, it cannot know in the absence of knowledge (I, 24-5). In a sense however the self can be taken as wider than the self (I, 29), because it has other characteristics like sukha, vīrya etc. In view of its being an embodiment of knowledge, the soul is capable of knowing itself, other objects than itself and the combinatory products of the two (I, 36). But this essential knowing ability of the soul is crippled because of its long association with karmic matter (in the form of knowledge-obscuring etc.); and it has come to possess the sense-organs (I, 55; II, 53) The senses are material in nature (paudgalika) and hence foreign to the real nature of the soul. Whatever is apprehended through the senses is indirect (parokşa), because the soul is not directly apprehending the object of knowledge; that would be direct apprehension (paccakkham vinnānam) when the soul apprehends all by itself without the aid of senses ( I, 56-58). The sense-perception is graded and mediate (ajugavam and parokkham), because it has four stages : outlinear grasp (avagraha), discrimination (īhā), judgment (avāya) and retention (dhāraṇā) (1, 40).
1 Sänkhyalanlāx 53-4; Anugita xiv 36 etc.; Keith: Sānilnya system p. 34. 2 Collected Works Vol. II, p. 242. 3 S'vetās'vataropanisad I, 3 and Keith: Samkhya System p. 34 4 Max Müller, Sox systems etc. p. 334,
