Schools and Sects in Jaina Literature

Author(s): Amulyachandra Sen
Publisher: Vishwa Bharati Calcutta

Page 31

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SCHOOLS AND SECTS IN JAINA LITERATURE
Payesi then argued that the decay of the body in old age showed there was no permanent underlying jiva, to which it was said in reply that the body was merely the material which was liable to decay without effecting any changes or decay in the underlying energy of the jiva. He then argued that he once killed a robber weighing him immediately before and after his death and found no difference between the two weights. If the robber had a soul different from the body there would certainly have been some difference in his weight before and after the soul left the body. Again he argued that he cut into many pieces a robber, looked very closely into it for a soul but found it nowhere. Kesi replied that the weight and form of the soul were not perceptible by the ordinary organs of sense.
(V) NASTIKA-VADA. The philosophy of the Nāstikas or those who deny the existence of the soul was well-known to the Jainas. There is a reference to those who ignore and deny the tenets of the Nirgranthas," which Silāņka understands as an allusion to the Buddhists and the followers of Bphaspati, the latter being a well-known school of Nāstikas.
A more precise reference speaks of those that profess exclusive belief in the five gross elements, viz., earth, water, fire, air and sky. These five are all that exist and there is nothing in addition to these. This ultramaterialistic view is in line with Cārvāka's famous doctrine of the nonexistence of the soul or God or a life hereafter. Sīlāņka quotes the notorious statement attributes to Cārvāka wherein the latter holds that there is nothing beyond what is perceived by the senses, the past never returns, there is no karman or its effects, the dead never comes back, there is no future life and that the body is but the fortuitous combination of the elemients.
The Parable of the Lotus-pool states the doctrine in the following manner :
There are only the five elements through which is explained wliether an action is good or bad. The five elements are not created, directly or indirectly, nor made ; they are neither effects nor products, they are without beginning and end, they always produce effects, are independent of a directing cause, they are eternal. What is does not perish, from nothing nothing comes. All living beings, all things, the whole world consists
15 Süt.s. I.i.1.6. 16 Süt.S. I.i.1.7.