Some Problems in Jaina Psychology

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Karnatak University Dharwar

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INTRODUCTION
The aim of this treatise is to present some problems of Jaina psychology with reference to ancient Indian and Western thought including Western psychological thought, specially of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Jainism is a realistic philosophy. As a religion it is a polemic against the authority of the Vedas and the pseudo-spiritualism of the elaborate sacrificial system of worship. Jainism is an old religion which prevailed even before Pärśva and Vardhamana, the last two tirthankaras. The Yajurveda mentions Rṣabha, Ajita and Ariṣṭanemi as tīrthankaras. The Bhagavata Purāṇa endorses the view that Rṣabha was the founder of Jainism.1 Jainism reflects the cosmology and anthropology of a much older pre-Aryan upper class of North-Eastern India.2 Jacobi has traced Jainism to early primitive currents of metaphysical speculation.3 But the Jaina metaphysics, epistemology and psychology have arisen as a result of the interaction of the 'orthodox' ways of Indian thought. The Jaina system of thought arose out of the need to re-assert the Jaina faith against the academic invasions of Hindu thought. Elements of the Hindu and Buddhist theories have been incorporated in the Jaina theory of knowledge. As an example of such interaction we may mention the Jaina theory of pratyakṣşa as a source of knowledge. The original Jaina theory of pratyakṣa as a direct source of knowledge of the soul and parokṣa as knowledge due to the sense organs were modified in the light of the prevailing views of other systems of Indian thought. However, in this treatise we are not directly concerned with the problems of the antiquity of Jainism and the chronological order of the Jaina epistemological and psychological theories.
The Indian mind is synthetic. It is the synthetic view that has made our philosophy embrace all branches of knowledge into one comprehensive view. In recent times, the sciences have become independent and they have freed themselves from the bonds of philosophy. But in ancient India, as also in the ancient West, philosophy included all the sciences. For instance, there was no special science of psychology. It was a philosophy of the mind. The term psychology belongs to our 'new world'. Even half a century ago it was a philosophy of the mind or it was at least a mental physiology.4 Contemporary psychology, especially the British and the American psychology, may be considered as a science detached from the
1 Radhakrishnan (S.): Indian Philosophy, Vol. I., p. 287.
2 Zimmer (H.): Philosophies of India, p 217.
3 Jacobi (Hermann): Studies in Jainism-Jainism.
4 Rhys Davids (Mrs. Birth of Indian Psychology-Introduction.