CHAPTER III.
THE ÁRHATA SYSTEM.
The Gymnosophists[40] (Jainas), rejecting these opinions of the Muktakachchhas,[41] and maintaining continued existence to a certain extent, overthrow the doctrine of the momentariness of everything. (They say): If no continuing soul is accepted, then even the arrangement of the means for attaining worldly fruit in this life will be useless. But surely this can never be imagined as possible—that one should act and another reap the consequences! Therefore as this conviction, "I who previously did the deed, am the person who now reap its consequences," establishes undoubtedly the existence of a continuing soul, which remains constant through the previous and the subsequent period, the discriminating Jaina Arhats reject as untenable the doctrine of momentary existence, i.e., an existence which lasts only an instant, and has no previous or subsequent part.
But the opponent may maintain, "The unbroken stream (of momentary sensations) has been fairly proved by argument, so who can prevent it? In this way, since our tenet has been demonstrated by the argument, 'whatever is, is momentary, &c.,' it follows that in each parallel line of successive experiences the previous consciousness is the agent and the subsequent one reaps the fruit. Nor may you object that, 'if this were true, effects might extend beyond all bounds'—[i.e., A might act, and B receive the punishment]—because there is an essentially controlling relation in the very nature of cause and effect. Thus we see that when mango seeds, after being steeped in sweet juices, are planted in prepared soil, there is a definite certainty that sweetness will be found in the shoot, the stalk, the stem, the branches, the peduncle, &c., and so on by an unbroken series to the fruit itself; or again, when cotton seeds have been sprinkled with lac juice, there will be a similar certainty of finding, through the same series of shoot, &c., an ultimate redness in the cotton. As it has been said—
"'In whatever series of successive states the original impression of the action was produced,
"'There verily accrues the result, just like the redness produced in cotton.
"'When lac juice, &c., are poured on the flower of the citron, &c.,
"'A certain capacity is produced in it,—do you not see it?'"
But all this is only a drowning man's catching at a straw, for it is overthrown by the following dilemma:—