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236 :: Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism
two basic nayas. It is Kundakunda who mentions the niscaya and the vyavahāra nayas and the tradition is followed by Nemicandra. The absence of this tradition in metaphysics shows that Kundakunda's nayas are formulated from the ethical point of view. We must be aware of the fact that the vyavahāra of Kundakunda is not the same as that of Umāsvāti. Vidyānanda holds the vyavahāra naya to be a variety of the dravyarthika naya” while the popular belief identifies the niscaya with the dravyārthika and the vyavahāra with the paryayārthika nayas. The niscaya naya has been again divided into pure and impure ones as we clearly see in Nemicandra. Brahmadeva thinks that with reference to the pure view-point the impure niscaya-naya is also a vyavaharanaya.3 The former sees the soul as free and pure, while the latter takes its mundane existence into consideration but independently of the material karmas. So the nayas of Kundakunda are concerned with the various states (modes) of the soul as abstructions from an existing reality. Hence in metaphysics they must fall under the paryāyārthika-naya. But on the other hand ethics must study things with reference to the ideal of the pure soul, which raised the importance of the niscaya-naya considerably. In spite of this fact the niscaya is only a naya, a view point, and it cannot yield the whole truth. The association of karmas with the soul is only a nimitta, an auxiliary cause, for the soul's manifestations. Anger, sensuous knowledge, etc., are the soul's own manifestations, or the soul must be held to be static as the Sāṁkhya does. The impure view-point considers such distorted manifestations of the soul, but it carries almost no import in the ethical realm. It is why Kundakunda recommends an advance over the vyavahāra and the impure view-points. These view-points must be held to be false with respect to the pure view-point, because every partial
1. Umāsvāti: Tattvārthasútra, 1,33. 2. Vidyānandin: Tattvārthaílokavārtika, 1.33.3 3. Brahmadeva: Dravyasangraha-vrtti, p. 89
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