[Footnote 2: See Jaina Vârttika, p. 60.]
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a description. This is directly against the view of the great Mîmâ@msa authority Prabhâkara [Footnote ref 1]. The soul in its pure state is possessed of infinite perception (ananta-dars'ana), infinite knowledge (ananta-jñâna), infinite bliss (ananta-sukha) and infinite power (ananta-vîrya) [Footnote ref 2]. It is all perfect. Ordinarily however, with the exception of a few released pure souls (mukta-jîva) all the other jîvas (sa@msârin) have all their purity and power covered with a thin veil of karma matter which has been accumulating in them from beginningless time. These souls are infinite in number. They are substances and are eternal. They in reality occupy innumerable space-points in our mundane world (lokâkâs`a), have a limited size (madhyama-parimâ@na) and are neither all-pervasive (vibhu) nor atomic (anu); it is on account of this that jîva is called Jivâstikâya. The word astikâya means anything that occupies space or has some pervasiveness; but these souls expand and contract themselves according to the dimensions of the body which they occupy at any time (bigger in the elephant and smaller in the ant life). It is well to remember that according to the Jains the soul occupies the whole of the body in which it lives, so that from the tip of the hair to the nail of the foot, wherever there may be any cause of sensation, it can at once feel it. The manner in which the soul occupies the body is often explained as being similar to the manner in which a lamp illumines the whole room though remaining in one corner of the room. The Jains divide the jîvas according to the number of sense-organs they possess. The lowest class consists of plants, which possess only the sense-organ of touch. The next higher class is that of worms, which possess two sense-organs of touch and taste. Next come the ants, etc., which possess touch, taste, and smell. The next higher one that of bees, etc., possessing vision in addition to touch, taste, and smell. The vertebrates possess all the five sense-organs. The higher animals among these, namely men, denizens of hell, and the gods possess in addition to these an inner sense-organ namely manas by virtue of which they are
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[Footnote 1: See Prameyakamalamârta@nda, p. 33.]
[Footnote 2: The Jains distinguish between dars'ana and jñâna. Dars'ana is the knowledge of things without their details, e.g. I see a cloth. Jñâna means the knowledge of details, e.g. I not only see the cloth, but know to whom it belongs, of what quality it is, where it was prepared, etc. In all cognition we have first dars'ana and then jñâna. The pure souls possess infinite general perception of all things as well as infinite knowledge of all things in all their details.]
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called rational (sa@mjñin) while the lower animals have no reason and are called asamjnin.
Proceeding towards the lowest animal we find that the Jains regard all the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) as being animated by souls. Thus particles of earth, etc., are the bodies of souls, called earth-lives, etc. These we may call elementary lives; they live and die and are born again in another elementary body. These elementary lives are either gross or subtle; in the latter case they are invisible. The last class of one-organ lives are plants. Of some plants each is the body of one soul only; but of other plants, each is an aggregation of embodied souls, which have all the functions of life such as respiration and nutrition in common. Plants in which only one soul is embodied are always gross; they exist in the habitable part of the world only. But those plants of which each is a colony of plant lives may also be subtle and invisible, and in that case they are distributed all over the world. The whole universe is full of minute beings called nigodas; they are groups of infinite number of souls forming very small clusters, having respiration and nutrition in common and experiencing extreme pains. The whole space of the world is closely packed with them like a box filled with powder. The nigodas furnish the supply of souls in place of those that have reached Moksa. But an infinitesimally small fraction of one single nigoda has sufficed to replace the vacancy caused in the world by the Nirvana of all the souls that have been liberated from beginningless past down to the present. Thus it is evident the sa@msâra will never be empty of living beings. Those of the nigodas who long for development come out and continue their course of progress through successive stages [Footnote ref 1].
Karma Theory.