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Śramana, Vol 58, No. 2-3/April-September 2007
universal knowledge i. e. complete knowledge of complete details of which the world is composed. The cause of defining omniscience as knowledge of every thing rooted in the religious motive foe exalting the status of Mahāvīra and other Tirthankaras to the maximum. We have the same notion in Buddhism also where some Buddhists declare Buddha to be the knower of every thing. In addition, this is the psychology behind the attempt to treat omniscience as knowledge of each details of the universe. Jainas believe, as Whitehead holds, that every small particle in the universe is related to the entire universe in space and time. Therefore, one who does not know simultaneously the object of the three senses and in the three Lokas, he cannot know even a single substance with its infinite modifications.
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From remote past in the history of Jainism, i.e. in the age of the Agamas coming up to Akalanka, Vidyānanda, Prabhācandra, Yasovijaya and others, there is the tendency to justify this sense of omniscience. Even Kundakunda, Haribhadra and Yasovijaya in their early writings have supported this view of omniscience as the knowledge of all substance and their modes. The present notion is really in accordance with realistic tone and temper of Jaina metaphysics. Jainas hold that there is no ambiguity in knowledge when it comprehends the entire modes of all the entities, because the universe is an integrated system whose relation is equally real and objective. Dr. Nathmal Tatia, in his work Studies in Jaina Philosophy has told that 'symbolically, the relations are links between A and the contents of not-A. This means that the complete knowledge of A implies the complete knowledge of not-A and this is obviously the knowledge of the whole universe. The prominent Jaina logicians like Samantabhadra, Akalanka, Prabhācandra, and Vidyananda, Anantakirti and others have firm opinion that omniscience must be the simultaneous cognition of all substances of with all of their attributes.
Chronological development of the Concept
To determine properly the chronology of the concept of omniscience is very difficult because, the antiquity of Jaina thought
