Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
commands, and Purandara only when he is actually destroying enemy-cities, or to call a cow a gau (that which moves about) only when it goes out, or a cowhouse only when it is housing Cows.
Of these seven nayas, the first four are concerned with the sense (artha) and the meaning, and the last three with the verbal expressions (šabda) used to convey the sense implied. Again, the first three of them are substantial, dealing with the substance as a whole, and the last four are modifications, dealing with the modes or modifications of the substance, caused by the changes that are constantly taking place in its qualities. Those of the first set are known respectively as the artha-nayas and the sabda-nayas, and those of the second set as the dravy-ārthika and the paryāy-ārthika nayas.
According to another classification, the nayas are broadly categorised as the niscaya-naya and the vyavahāra-naya. The first denotes the real, essential and substantial point of view, and the other the practical, conventional, popular and relative point of view. The first deals with the pure, essential, real, and intrinsic nature of the substance, and the second views the substance through its relationships with other substances, or through the conditions caused in it under extraneous influences: the one is permanent and everlasting and the other ephemeral, transitory and perishable. Take for example the case of a person named Rāma. He is a male human being, hence a living being, and therefore, endowed with a soul. In other words, he represents the soul which is for the time being housed in the body that passes under the name Rāma. This soul is intrinsically and essentially of the same nature as any other soul. It possesses the potentialities and capacities of becoming all-knowing, all-perceiving, allpowerful and all-blissful, and of freeing itself from all the material and worldly bondages and shackles, including the