# The Heart of Jainism/Chapter 6

A well-known authority has said that it is doubtful whether Jainism can truthfully claim to have contributed a single new thought of value to the sum of philosophy. However that may be, it is absolutely necessary to follow this intricate system through all those long lists with their divisions and subdivisions in which the Jaina love to classify and arrange their thought, if one would understand how they think of the soul (jīva) and the means by which it may free itself from the consequence of action and obtain deliverance; for this is the chief content of Jaina philosophy. A special interest to the student of Jaina thought lies in trying to guess—for as yet we are only in the guessing stage—from whence the Jaina have gleaned their various ideas. The animistic element bulks largely in all Indian thought, and one proof of the antiquity of Jainism is the way in which it has incorporated animistic beliefs into its ‘systematic theology’; for, as we shall see when we come to discuss the nine categories, the system is not only animistic but hylozoistic. The Jaina, in common with the Buddhists, seem to have accepted as the ground-work of their belief the philosophy of the Brāhman Sannyāsin. They incorporated into their faith the doctrines of transmigration and karma without putting a special stamp on either; but the doctrine of non-killing (ahiṁsā), which they also borrowed, they exalted to a position of primary importance, and they laid an entirely new emphasis on the value of austerity both inward and outward. Like Buddhism and Brāhmanism, Jainism might be defined as a ‘way of escape’ ​not from death but from life; but unlike either of them, it hopes to escape not into nothingness nor into absorption, but into a state of being without qualities, emotions, or relations, and removed from the possibility of rebirth. It is interesting to look at Jainism in relation to the six schools of Indian philosophy. In reference to them the Jaina quote the old story of six blind men who each laid their hands on a different part of an elephant and tried to describe the whole animal. The man who held the ear thought the creature resembled a winnowing-fan, the holder of the leg imagined that he was clinging to a big round pillar, and similarly each opinion differed, but the owner who saw the whole explained that each had only a portion of the truth. The six men represent the six schools, and the owner is in their view of course Jainism. The Jaina hold in fact that the six schools of philosophy are part and parcel of one organic whole, and that if one be taken by itself it becomes a false doctrine. One of the great questions amongst the schools is as to whether an effect is the same as its material cause or pre-exists in that cause and is only made manifest by the operation which that cause undergoes (this is the Satkārya doctrine of the Sāṅkhya and the Vedānta); or whether the effect is something new and did not exist before (which is the Asatkārya doctrine held by the Vaiśeṣika). On this point Jainism shows its usual comprehensiveness, and believing that both views were linked together from time without beginning, says that ‘an effect pre-exists in the cause in one sense and is a new thing in another. If you look at an effect such as a jar as a mere substance, the substance is the same as in the loose earth of which the jar is made; but if you look at the jar as a modification, it is new and did not exist when the earth was in the condition of loose particles’.
Another burning question is whether or no the soul ​exists and acts. The Kriyāvāda doctrine teaches that the soul exists, acts, and is affected by acts, and this is held by the Jaina in common with the Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya schools. The opposite doctrine—the Akriyāvāda—that the soul does not exist, or that it does not act, or is not affected by acts, is held, according to the Jaina view, by the Buddhists in common with the Vedānta, Sāṅkhya and Yoga schools, and those who hold this doctrine will be, so the Jaina aver, whirled round in the endless circle of rebirths.
Another great question is as to how the soul becomes fettered. The Sāṅkhya school believe it to be owing to an insentient principle which they call prakṛiti; the Vedāntists believe also that it is owing to an insentient principle, but this principle they hold to be māyā or avidyā; but the Jaina believe the jiva to be bound through the pudgaḷa of karma.
Deliverance necessarily differs, according as the fetters differ. The Vedānta school holds that moksa is gained by learning to distinguish the true soul (ātmā) from the illusion (māyā) which fetters it, and the Sāṅkhya similarly strives to know ātmā as separated from prakṛiti, but the Jaina conceive of the spirit as freed through austerities from the karma it had accumulated, and existing in limitless serenity.
The Jaina claim not to be Ekāntavādin, those who look at things from one point of view, but Anekāntavādin, those who look at things from various points of view, and the part of their philosophy of which they are most proud is the Saptabhaṅgī Naya.
Dr. Jacobi thinks that this may have been invented to confute the views of some dangerous opponent, probably the Agnosticism of Sañjaya. (Certainly to fight against it would be as difficult and useless as fighting against a London fog!) The locus classicus of its exposition to which all ​Jaina immediately refer you is in Dr. Bhandarkar’s Search for Jaina Manuscripts, from which they always quote it in full.
   ‘You can’, the famous passage runs, ‘affirm existence of a thing from one point of view (Syād asti), deny it from another (Syān nāsti); and affirm both existence and non-existence with reference to it at different times (Syād asti nāsti). If you should think of affirming both existence and non-existence at the same time from the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be so spoken of (Syād avaktavyaḥ). Similarly under certain circumstances, the affirmation of existence is not possible (Syād asti avaktavyaḥ); of non-existence (Syān nāsti avaktavyaḥ); and also of both (Syād asti nāsti avaktavyaḥ). What is meant by these seven modes is that a thing should not be considered as existing everywhere, at all times, in all ways, and in the form of everything. It may exist in one place and not in another, and at one time and not at another.’
The example paṇḍits gave the writer to illustrate this important doctrine was that one and the same man is spoken of as father, uncle, father-in-law, son, son-in-law, brother and grandfather.
As an illustration of its use they say:
   ‘Let us suppose that an agnostic denies the existence of soul in all ways. To him the Jaina Syādvāda would answer that as soul is a substance, it exists. Soul exists in itself and its modifications, but it does not exist in other substances such as matter (pudgala), &c., and also other substances do not exist in soul. So, from this point of view, soul does not exist. But soul sometimes exists and also does not exist at different times. But the soul cannot be spoken of, if we think of affirming its existence and non-existence, at the same time and from the same point of view. Similarly, under certain conditions, viz. when the state of existence (i.e. astitva) itself cannot be spoken of, i.e. exists and exists and does not exist cannot be spoken of at the same time, we are unable to affirm that existence is possible, that non-existence is possible, and that both existence and non-existence are possible. Thus Syādvāda teaches the fundamental theory that everything in the universe is related to every other thing. . . . The Jaina school of philosophy coincides, in one respect, with Hegel’s idea that being and non-being are identical.’
* ↑ Save that whilst the Brāhmans believe that karma acts indirectly through the agency of God, the Jaina hold that it acts automatically.
* ↑ Bhandarkar, Search for Sanskrit Manuscripts in 1883–4, p. 101.
* ↑ S. B. E., xlv, p. xxv.
* ↑ See p. 106.
* ↑ S. B. E., xlv, p. xxvii.
* ↑ Bhandarkar, loc. cit., pp. 95 ff.
* ↑ U. D. Barodia, History and Literature of Jainism, Bombay, 1909, p. 119.