Book Title: Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics
Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Page 279
________________ 264 Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics as an immaterial substance. Modern thinkers would feel inclined to reject the substantiality of a real which is neither psychical nor material. Indian philosophers, however, had ideas of such reals. We have seen how the Jaina's looked upon Dharma and Adharma, the principles of motion and rest, as well as Ākāśa or space as reals which were unpsychical but not material on that account. With the Vaiseșika's as well as with the Jaina's, Kāla or the principle of mutation was such a reality. The former looked upon Dik or the principle of direction as a real which was neither material nor psychical. Manas according to the thinkers of the Nyāya and the Vaiseșika schools were similarly eternal reals which had neither the nature of a soul nor that of matter. CAN MANAS OF THE NYĀYA BE IDENTIFIED WITH LIFE? We have seen how the thinkers of the Nyāya school attributed to the instrumentality of Manas, not only the soul's power of knowing, feeling and willing but also the generation and operation of the vital force itself. This foreshadows the supposition of the modern school of thinkers that the psychical operations of cognition, volition and affection as well as the vital operations connected with the preservation and movements of the body, are to be traced to one and the same fundamental principle of life. Life may thus be identified with the Manas of the Naiyāyika's. The Sāṁkhya philosophers, reducing Manas to Mahat, a mode of matter after all, seem to agree with those modern thinkers of a strong materialistic bias, according to whom all phenomena, conscious, vital and physical are but different ways of operations of the physico-chemical forces. The Buddhist Vijñāna-vāda and the Vedāntic monism on the contrary, reduce all the three phenomena, conscious, vital and physical, to the conscious principle. According to the Sāṁkhya, Manas is essentially matter, while according to the Buddhists and the Vedāntins, it is consciousness (directly according to the Buddhists and indirectly according to the Vedāntins). The Naiyāyika's are opposed to the doctrine of pure consciousness as a real principle, existing in and by itself. They Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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