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the world are inhabited by which classes of living beings. The third chapter deals with the relative numerical starength of the different classes of living beings. The life-duration of these classes is given in the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter makes an enumeration of the counts on which two worldly souls may be compared with each other. All these and similar other details are mostly dogmatic.
The Prajnapana devoted several chapters to the problems related to body and bodily activities Similarly, it devotes a number of chapters to the problems related to cognitive, affective, and conative activities. Some of the chapters are exclusively devoted to the treatment of Karma which is at the root of all worldly life.
The Jivajivabhigama classifies the world of living beings variously in its different chapters. These may be called natural classifications. In the case of each classification the following questions are discussed :
1. Sub-classification 2. Life-duration 3. Period of continuous existence 4. Period of continuous non-existence 5. Relative numerical strength
Much of the subject-matter of the Jivajivabhigama is common with the Prajnapana.
The Jivajivavibhakti chapter of the Uttaradhyayana offers a most basic account of the living beings. Whereas the prajnapana describes the classes of living beings in the simple order of one-sensed, two-sensed, three-sensed, four-sensed and five-sensed, the Uttaradhyayana first divides the living beings into two broad classes viz, immobile and mobile, and then sub-divides the former into three classes, viz. earth-bodied, water-bodied and plant-bodied, and the latter into three, viz. firebodied, air-bodied and gross-bodied. The gross-bodied class consists of the twosensed beings etc. This procedure is adopted in the Jivajivabhigama also (chapter I) and in later times Umasvati also supported it, but it was foreign to all old canonical texts and Digambara works except Parichastikaya of Acharya Kunda Kunda.
The Rajaprasniya is the first Jaina work to advance arguments for the independant existence of soul. It adduces a number of arguments to convince us that soul is something different from body. Even if imperceptible (by the sense organs) soul is a real entity just as so many physical things are real even if imperceptible. The omniscient has a direct perception (extra-sensory perception) of this entity. The same soul can occupy an elephant's body in one life and an ant's in another. It is capable of contraction and expansion just like the light of a lamp.
The Tattvarthasutra on the whole reproduces in a more systematic way the
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