Book Title: Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra
Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology
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152 Studies in Umāsvāti including social systems are derived. The Jainas thus followed in the wake of Mahāyānists.
The adoption of the idea of Brahman to the Jaina system must have occurred at some canonical stage, much earlier than the time of Umāsvāti. However, the Jaina loka which resembles cosmic man, is ajīva or matter, thereby kevali samudghāta is difficult to allow a kevali to attain his final perfection. Then, if the Jaina loka were assumed to be Cosmic jina or God who enables a kevali's unification with Him, in as much as the case of Brahman and Mahāyānists' Cosmic Buddha, it would be contradicted by their dual system of jīva-ajīva that excludes the existence of the absolute one. A kevali thus falls into a dilemma in performing kevali samudghāta, this being a method and a mechanical process of eradicating his entire karmic matter particles, that have been bound inseparably with his soul since times eternal, by way of spreading his entire soul space throughout the lokākāśa in a profile of Cosmic Man, and exploding them, just as a fully blown baloon brusts at its maximum expansion to exclude its air inside.
Due to some dissatisfactory factors hidden in this method of karmic destruction, Jaina theoreticians in the canonical age including Umāsvāti, could not openly say that the Jaina loka resembles cosmic man. Post canonical theoreticians, then, followed the same practice of their predecessors. However, as time went on, its grave significance came to be gradually forgotten, and the modern commentators of the T.S. must have started to elucidate that their loka is built in the appearance of cosmic man. Then, there also appeared an idea of the Jaina loka in a profile of Cosmic Woman, as mentioned already. This Jaina loka expressed in a figure of cosmic woman belongs, most probably, to a tantric line.
