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NATURE OF SAINĀ
53 for their formation. This leads us to the postulation of a peculiar capacity of the soul. This capacity is called bhāva-śruta.
The other characteristics viz. gamika and agamika-angapravista and angabāhya refer to peculiar categories of scriptural texts and so, being unimportant for our purpose, are not discussed here."
We have now seen how śruta which originally meant 'scripture' gradually came to mean any symbol, written or spoken, and finally was even identified with inarticulate verbal knowledge. This development of meaning is not, strictly speaking, chronological. It is the gradual subtlety of speculation that is responsible for this development. The self-same thinker could have started from the conception of śruta as scripture and reached the conception of śruta as inarticulate verbal knowledge. The speculations recorded in Jaina scriptures on this subject are so rich, subtle and varied that it is difficult to ascertain the original contributions of the later Jaina authors. Almost every idea that we have been dealing with can be traced in the Agamas in some form or other. Our statement about development is to be judged with this proviso.
We have hitherto based our enquiry on the Avasyakaniryukti and the Nandi Sūtra and have referred to the other sources only occasionally for the sake of elucidation. After the Nandi Sutra we come to the Višeşāvaśyakabhāsya of Jinabhadra. It presents the theory in a developed form as will be apparent from what follows. We shall end our enquiry of the śruta-jñāna by drawing a clear line of demarcation between the mati-jñāna and the śruta-jñāna.
NATURE OF SAM JNA We have referred to samjñi-śruta and asamjñi-śruta. Here asarjñā does not mean total absence of any samjñā, but only an indistinct presence of it. The capacity by which one remembers t bygone past and ponders over the coming future is dirghakālikī (or simply kāliki) sarjñā.3 Only those who have mind4 can possess this capacity. A being possessing this samjñā enjoys the capacity for the utilization of all the sense-organs including mind. The human beings as well as the sub-human beings born of wombs (garbhaja) possess this
For information see NSü, 43 et seq. The first Karmagrantha (gāthā 7) records an additional mode of considering śruta-jñāna, which, however, has no epistemological value and so is omitted here. 2 Cf. Vibh, 506-7.
3 Ibid., 508. 4 The mind, according to the Jainas, is an instrument of thinking, which a soul makes for itself out of the groups of material atoms fit for the purpose and becomes capable of thinking through its agency. Of course only the developed souls have the capacity to form minds.
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