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54: Śramaņa, Vol 62, No. 1 January-March 2011
personal identity is lost for Jains upon liberation.18 Jyoti Prasad Jain seems to encourage such a conclusion when he claims that all souls are alike.19 The Agama Bhagavati or Vyakhyā-prajñapti, as reported by J. C. Sikdar, equates the soul of an elephant and that of an insect, claiming that they are the same." 20 Also adding to the confusion is the Jaina position that "all diversity among beings, though real, exists simply on the level of modes.' Now 'the same' is understood by Jains to mean similarity rather than identity, but the amount of evidence that suggests identity rather than similarity is striking. Let us consider what John E. Corte has had to say about the issue:22
"21
The biography of each Jina is marked by five beneficial events known as kalyāṇakas: conception, birth, mendicant initiation, enlightenment, and bodily liberation at the moment of death. The ontological content of these events is largely identical in the life of each of the Jinas. The biography of each Jina, therefore, is not the story of a unique life, but is rather an ever-repeated story. [...] At a fundamental level, nothing new ever happens in the universal history, and the identities of the Jinas elide into a composite identity as the Jina, God. The individual qualities of an individual that go to make up a personality, what Heinrich Zimmer (1951: 234,41) calls the "mask of the personality", are part of the material world (ajiva), part of the realm of karma, not part of the eternal soul (jiva), and so are shucked off along with the body when the Jina attains final liberation at the moment of death.
23
Cort understands the identity of the Jinas (liberated jīvas in Jaina history), and therefore the identity of the liberated jīva, as singular. What differentiates the jīvas, in Cort's view, are inconsequential details (extrinsic attributes). It seems then that Cort would agree that jivas lose their identity upon liberation. It should be taken into consideration when evaluating the identity of the jīvas that the lives of the Jinas in Jaina historical accounts are documented and thought to be valuable but virtually nothing is said about their identity as individuals after liberation. Perhaps that is because they share an
