Sambodhi 2006 Vol 30

Author(s): J B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 48

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is the view of accidentalists. For example, fire is due to grass and arani (the piece of wood used for kindling fire by attrition)." Dalhana was an expert in medicine and surgery, but not in philosophy. That alone may account for this bizarre faux pas." Thus the medical tradition, too, does not embody a uniform concept relating to svabhāva.
Jain views
RAMKRISHNA BHATTACHARYA
The canonical texts of the Jains do not refer to the doctrine of svabhava by name, nor is there any hint at such a doctrine in the SKS and AS. But Siläñka (ninth century) mentions the doctrine in his commentary on these two texts." Some other Jain writers, too, occasionally take note of svabhava in various works.
Unfortunately the Jain philosophical tradition does not offer any uniform view of svabhava. As in the case of other Brahminical and Buddhist writers, the Jains, too, present two diametrically opposite concepts of svabhāva, viz. causality and accidentalism. Some of them also associate svabhavaväda with materialism, variously called bhutavada and tajjivatacchariravada, some others remain rather noncommittal. More interestingly, at least two Jain authors, instead of rejecting svabhavavada, propose to proffer a syncretic view, incorporating svabhäva as one of the factors constituting the first cause. Thus, the wheel takes a full turn: from the monistic (ekantavädin) position of the Sv. Up. to the pluralistic (anekantavädin) acceptance of all doctrines that were projected as the one and only cause of the world.
ii)
SAMBODHI
The following chart gives a synoptic picture of the views of svabhāva held by Jain writers from Samantabhadra (sixth century) and Jinabhadragani (sixth/ seventh century) to Gunaratna (fifteenth century).
i)
iii)
iv)
svabhava causality:
Silänka, Abhayadevasüri, Gunaratna
svabhava accident:
Mallavädisüri, Jinabhadragani, Maldhari Hemachandra
Non-committal views re: svabhāva
Nemicandra, Siddharși, Somadevasüri, Devendra, Jñänavimala Syncretic view: