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A SOURCE-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
body. But from the point of view of psychic energy the sense-organs function in the pervasive way. The function of the sense-organs depends on the subsidence and destruction of the kārmic matter which gives rise to the removal of the obscurations connected with the point of sense-experience. This is all-pervasive in the body. From the point of view of grasping and understanding the subject, manas can be considered pervasive of the body.
a) EXISTENCE OF THE MANAS Different philosophers have given arguments for the existence of the manas. The Nyāyasūtra says that we can infer the existence of the manas because without manas, knowledge is not possible. Vātsyāyana says that the manas can be proved because certain mental functions like memory and cognition are not possible to be obtained through the sense-organs only.3 Annambhatta says that mental states like pleasure are possible through the medium of manas. Jainas“ maintain that mental states like doubt, dream-cognition, pleasure and pain and connotive activity are not possible without the medium of manas.
We may now analyse the different stages of avagraha, ihā, dhāraņā, avāya as stages of sense-perception.
u AVAGRAHA Avagraha is a sensational stage where there is an awareness of the object without cognising the specific nature of the object. It only presents the general characteristic of the object in cognition. We cannot, in this, know the specific details about the nature of the object. This is the stage which may be considered to be the stage of sensation following the stage of darśana in the sense of the threshold of consciousness. In the avagraha we do not really get the general characteristics of the
1 Nyaya sütra 1, 1, 16. 2 Vätsyāyana bhāşya 1, 1, 16 3 Tarkasangraha 4 Sanmatiprakaraṇa ţikā kānda 2 5 Bhagavati 1, 3. 6 Pramāṇamīmārsā 1, 1, 26
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