Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): D C Sirkar
Publisher: University of Calcutta

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RELIGION AND CULTURE OE THE JAINS
to kill or hurt any living being. It instructs the ascetics to observe the five Mahāvratas or great commandments', viz. (i) to protect all lives, (ii) not to lie, (iii) not to take anything which is not offered, (iv) to abstain from sexual intercourse, and (v) to renounce all interest in worldly things, especially to call nothing as one's own.'
Jain philosophy teaches that the universe, when considered as 'the totality of realities', is infinite in space and eternal in time, and that when 'considered from the standpoint of the manifestations of the different realities', it is finite in space and non-eternal in time. According to it, there are five gateways of knowledge, each of which is subject to the laws of evolution and karman. These were described by Virchand R. Gandhi in the Parliament of Religions in the following way: In the lowest form of life, there is only one sense, that of touch. In the higher forms of life, there are two, three, four and (as in animals, birds, fish and men) five senses. These, according to the Jains, can unfold only a limited form of knowledge. The second source is study and reading. The third is Avadhi or the psychic faculty through which finer and more subtle things are known. The fourth is mind-knowing, through which one knows the mental activities of others. The fifth is the absolute knowledge which only can remove all the limitations of body and brain.°
The Jains admit that the soul is eternal having neither birth nor death, and that, when this takes its abode is a new body, the process is called rebirth. They also admit the existence of both the spirit and the matter, and as such, do not hesitate to call themselves dualists. In this connection, V. R. Gandhi announced before the Parliament of Religions : "We are dualists. We say, there is spirit and matter, while the positivists and monists in this country say, there is but
7 8 9
Ibid., pp. 7-8. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., pp. 21-22.