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80 : śramaņa, Vol 63, No. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2012 contradictory to our experience.
If we accept soul as permanent by its nature and any change in their nature accepted, then there will be no fluctuations in the human emotions, no feeling of joy or sorrow, no transmigration of soul from one realm to another can occur, no rebirth or pre-birth can take place, human efforts will not work at all, then entire human race will never try to attain emancipation, entire world religious beliefs and practices, God worship will prove to be of useless effort. Criterion of Reality After determination of the nature of reality, the question arises what is the criterion of reality in Jain philosophy? In Indian system of thought, the following four doctrines are found to determine the criterion of reality, viz. (i) the doctrine of absolute permanence (kevalanityatā or kūțasthanityatā), (ii) the doctrine of absolute impermanence (kevala-anityatā), (iii) the doctrine of absolute permanence and absolute change (nityānityatā) and (iv) the doctrine of permanence-in-change (pariņāmīnityatā).
As the advocate of the doctrine of permanence-in-change, Jain philosophy also speaks against the doctrine of absolute permanence and that of absolute impermanence and takes up the middle path of pariņāmīnityatā (permanence-in-change) in the following manner. It was quite natural that in the beginning of the rise of philosophy every school should speak in support of its own doctrine and against the invalidity of those of others, "in the name of these very doctrines of karma, etc." But in the age of Logic the Indian scholars advanced the argument that the entity which is capable of performing a function (arthakriyākārin) can be only Sat-real but nothing else. The credit of advancing this logical criterion of arthakriyākāritva (causal efficiency) goes to the Buddhist tradition. The word 'arthakriya occurs in the early Buddhist work Lalitavistarā in the sense of being
