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3. A CRITICAL STUDY OF SV, SVV AND SVT Jain Acāryas did not emphasise like Dharmakīrti on dharmajña but endeavoured to establish an omniscient person who must be dharmajña as well. Akalanka, following his predecessors, says that the soul has the inherent capacity to comprehend the substance ; if it does not, it is due to the obscuration of that capacity by the veil of Karmic bondage ; the destruction of Karmas will result in the perception of all things. Further, he establishes the soundness of this doctrine in Siddhiviniscaya :
If supra-sensorial knowledge is inadmissible, how can we have the nondiscrepant astrological divinations? Hence it must be accepted that there is a faculty of knowledge which is super-sensuous and this type of knowledge is nothing but Kevalajñana or omniscience?.
The very progressive gradation of knowledge necessarily implies the highest magnitude of knowledge attainable by man1. If a person has no capacity to know all, by means of Veda also he will not be able to know all ;2 hence the vindication of the concept of sarvajña. Impossibility of omniscience cannot be established without the knowledge of persons of all times. That is to say, one who rejects sarvajña for all times must be a sarvajña3. In this way, after giving the positive arguments, he relies on the negative argument that it is certain, there is no contradictory pramāna4 to reject the established omniscience; he substantiates this argument by examining the various so-called contradictory pramānas5.
Mahāvīra, the last tirthankara of the Jainas, was reputed as an omniscient person; it is said that he was conscious of all the objects and at all times. It is perhaps, for this reason that Buddha himself declared as the knower of four Noble Truths and refused to believe that he was a sarvajña.
This is attested by the contemporary Pali Pītakas which often redicule the idea ; and later Buddhist scholars like Acārya Dharmakirti refer and ridicule the omniscience of Rşabha and Mahāvīra as a fallacy of drstānta6. Briefly, Mahāvira was a sarvajña and Buddha a dharmajña; as the consequence of this, the Buddhist philosophers are less interested in discussing the concept of sarvajña, whereas the Jaina works are exhaltant and exhuberant on this problem.
1 SV, VIII. 8. 2 ibid, VIII. 3. 3 ibid, VIII, 10, 14. • SV, VIII. 12-18; vide also AGT, intro. 11. 55-56; NVVV, II, intro. p. 26-27. 5 'asti sarvajnah suniscitasambhavad-badhaka-pramanatvat sukhadivat.--SVV,
VIII. 6. $ Nyāyabindu, III. 131.
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