Sramana Tradation

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 84

Śramanic Critique of Brāhmanism
71
of a personal creator of the world not to the idea of a religious saviour. The Buddha and the Jina are in one sense hardly to be distinguished from God. They are omniscient as also the saviours of mankind and are in this sense exactly like God in His aspect of grace. This doctrine of omniscient human teachers was in turn vehemently criticized by Brāhmaṇical thinkers especially the Mīmāņsakas. The Jainas had, like Patāñjali, argued that from observing different degrees of knowledge we may infer someone with the highest perfection of knowledge. This is capable of being interpreted as a variety of the ontological argument but the Mimāmsakas refuted it empirically by arguing that some differences among men cannot be taken to be evidence for postulating unlimited differences. Some men jump more than others but from this it does not follow that some man can fly. The Buddhists reformulated the argument for omniscience by reinterpreting omniscience itself. It is the knowledge of spiritual truth that is relevant, not the knowledge of trivial or irrelevant things. This interpretation is more in harmony with the common belief of the Buddhists and the Jainas that omniscience is the spontaneous result of the purification of the mind which is thus set free to express its innate knowledge. Whether this innate knowledge of the soul or mind is only self-knowledge or also a knowledge of existence would remain disputable even if one accepts the view that spiritual experience is the revelation of some kind of reality.
The Jainas analyse the notion of being an effect' or Karyatva in some detail. Thus Prabhācandra asks - Is it being a whole with parts, or inhering in the actuality of its cause before becoming existent, or being the object of the notion of 'making', or being subject to change ? yattāvat kşityāderbuddhimaddhetukatvasiddhaye kāryatvam sadhanamuktam, tatkim sāvayavatvam, prágasataḥ svakaranasattásamavāyaḥ, kytamiti pratyayavi şayatvam, vikāritvam va syāt l'One must remember that of these the first had been specially emphasized by Nyaya-Vaisesika thinkers. Thus Vacaspati Misra had argued - 'na caiņāmutpattimatvamasiddham, sāvayavatvena vă mahatve sati kriyāvatvena vā vastradivat tatsiddheh/l' i. e., 'nor is it unproved that bodies, trees, mountains etc., have an origin because they are composed of parts, or one could say, because, not being of atomic dimension, they are subject to action just as cloth etc. are.' Prabhācandra asks, does