THE EPIC PERIOD The systems of materialism, Jainism and Buddhism, belong to the Epic period, which is the age of reconstruction. Materialism.—Materialism is called Lokayata (directed to the world), as it holds that only this world (loka) is real. According to it, perception is the only source of knowledge. Inference which assumes universal relations, testimony and analogy are all de fective. Matter is the only reality, of which the elements are earth, water, fire and air. Consciousness is a function of matter. There are different opinions about the nature of the soul. It is identified with the gross body or the senses or breath or thought. There is no future life. As the soul is an attribute of the body, it comes into being when the body is formed by the combination of the elements even as the power of intoxication arises from the mixture of certain ingredients. When the body is destroyed the soul dis appears. The world is born of itself. God is a myth which we accept—thanks to our ignorance and incapacity. Pleasure and pain are the central facts of life. Virtue and vice are conventions.
Vardhamana (c. 599-527 B.c.), the founder of Jain ism, is a slightly older contemporary of Buddha. He is said to have systematized the faith held by a succession of 23 other sages, of whom the chief was Parsvanatha (c. 776 B.c.).
Jainism assumes that truth is relative to our standpoints. The Jams are fond of quoting the old story of the six blind men who each laid hands on a different part of the elephant and tried to describe the whole animal. The man who caught the ear thought that the creature resembled a winnowing fan ; the holder of the leg imagined that he was clinging to a big round pillar, and so on. It was he who saw the whole that per ceived that each had only a portion of the truth. The doctrine of nayas brings out this relativity of thought. The most important application of this doctrine is the theory of Syddvada or Sapta bhangi. Every proposition gives us only a perhaps, a may be, or a sydt. We cannot affirm or deny anything absolutely of any object, owing to the endless complexity of things. Being is not of a persistent unalterable nature. Every statement of a thing is necessarily one-sided and incomplete. If we take it as true and complete we make a mistake. There are seven different ways of speaking of a thing or its attributes according to the point of view. All things, i.e., substances (dravya) are divided into lifeless (ajiva) and living (jive). The former are again divided into (1), space (dkiifa), (2) and (3), two subtle substances called dharma and adharma and (4), matter (pudgala). Space, dharma and adharma are the necessary conditions for the subsistence of all other things, viz., souls and matter. Space affords them room to exist ; dharma makes it possible for them to move or be moved, and adharma to rest. Time is recognized by some as a quasi-sub stance beside those mentioned. Matter is eternal though it may assume forms as earth, air and so on. It exists in the two forms of atoms (anu) and aggregates (skandha). The changes of the physical universe are traced to atomic aggregation and disinte gration. The atoms are not constant in their nature but are sub ject to change or development (parilaama), which consists in their assuming new qualities. There are not different kinds of atoms answering to the different elements of earth, water, fire and air. Homogeneous atoms produce different elements by varying com binations. While things which we perceive are made of gross matter, there is matter beyond the reach of our senses in subtle form which is transformed into the different degrees of karma.
This kind of matter fills all space. The soul by its commerce with the outer world becomes literally penetrated with the particles of this subtle matter. Karma works in such a way that every change leaves a mark which is retained and built up into the organism to serve as the foundation for future action.
The characteristic essence of the soul is consciousness (cetana), which is never destroyed, however much it may be obscured by external causes. The souls are said to possess size, which varies with the nature of the bodies with which they happen to be con nected. Subtle matter coming into contact with the soul causes its embodiment. Being then transformed into eight kinds of karma and forming, as it were, a subtle body, it clings to the soul in all its migrations. The individual soul (jiva) is a composite of con sciousness and matter or body. Jainism believes that there are souls even in inorganic objects, though they lie dormant in them.
Jainism does not believe in God, though the souls can reach a divine status. The souls and the world are self-existent and eternal. The chief means to the end of nirvana is the performance of austerities. By it we destroy the old karma and prevent the formation of the new. Right faith, right knowledge and right conduct are recommended. The peculiarity of the Jaina ethics is its insistence on avoidance of taking life of any kind.
also falls within the Epic period, but is dealt with in the articles BUDDHA and BUDDHISM.
