Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

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STUDIES IN JAINISM
sion that all living beings are subject to reanimation (pautta parihāram parihanti).
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All those who reach final beatitude will have to pass through 84,00,000 great kalpas, and then seven births as a deity, seven as a bulky (insensible) being, seven as a sensible being, and seven with changes of body through reanimation; and having thus gradually expiated the 5,00,000 deeds and the 60,603 minor deeds, they will reach final beatitude.3
Another account of his doctrine can be gathered from the Samaññaphala-Sutta. All beings and souls are without force, power, and energy of their own. They get transformed by their fate (niyati), by the necessary conditions of the class to which they belong (sangati), and by their individual nature (bhava-pariņatā). They experience pleasure and pain according to their position in one or other of the six classes of existences.
There are 84,00,000 periods during which both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration, shall at last make an end of pain. Though the wise should hope 'by this virtue or this performance of duty, or this penance or this righteousness, will I make the karma (I have inherited) that is not yet mature, mature', and though the fool should hope, by some means, to get gradually rid of karma that has matured neither of them can do it. Pleasure and pain cannot be altered in the course of transmigration; there can be neither increase nor decrease thereof, neither excess nor deficiency. Just as when a ball of string is cast forth, it will spread out just as far as, and no farther than, it can unwind, just so, both the fools and the wise, transmigrating exactly for the allotted term, shall then, and only then, make an end of pain."
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From the Tamil texts, we learn that the Ajivikas admitted five kinds of atoms: earth, water, fire, air, and life. Of
34. Rockhill, The Life of the Buddha (Trübner & Co., London, 1884), pp.250-51; and Barua, A History of Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy, p.301, f.n. 1.
35. Rockhill, op. cit., p.253.
36. Dialogues of the Buddha, I. pp.71-73.