Sacred Philosophy

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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nothing short of blasphemy to ascribe the authorship of the world to one whom we are ready to acknowledge as a living embodiment of pure, perfect holiness. We thus find ourselves left with the eternal substances of nature, which, with their different properties, suffice to account for the world-process. As regards the enumeration of these substances, Jainism has it that there are two main kinds of substance, jiva and ajiva, the former signifying that which is endowed with life and the latter, its opposite, the non-living. In modern thought, spirit and non-spirit would be fair equivalents of these terms.
Of these, the class non-spirit itself comprises no less than five different substances, namely, matter (termed pudgala in the Jaina terminology), Space, Time and two special kinds of ether, the functions of which are to be helpful in the motion and cessation of motion, respectively, of moving things. We thus have six substances in nature, namely, spirit, matter, Time, Space, and the two ethers. As for the proof of their existence, modern science recognises matter and one kind of ether, but has no definite notion about Time and Space, and is still, on the whole, inclined to deny, or at least reluctant to acknowledge jiva as a kind of substance by itself. It is not my purpose here, nor does time permit me at present, to enter into