exists and acts. The Kriyāvāda doctrine teaches that the soul exists, acts, and is affected by acts, and this is held by the Jaina[1] 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[2] 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[3] 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
