Absent Lord: Biology

The Jains have created a complex system of biological knowledge. It is a system that includes concepts of physiology, morphology, and modes of reproduction, but its main focus is taxonomy. It should not be thought of as a system of scientific analysis. Its basic motivation is soteriological, and the system may be seen as a conceptual scaffolding for the Jain vision of creaturely bondage and the path to liberation.

The beings of the world (jivs) are divided into two great classes, liberated (mukt) and unliberated (samsari). Liberated beings are those who have shed all forms of karmic matter, and unliberated beings are those who are in the bondage of karma.^[1] In turn, unliberated beings are divided into two great classes: beings that cannot move at their own volition (sthavar) and beings that, in order to avoid discomfort, can move about (tras).^[2] The beings of the sthavar class possess only one sense, the sense of touch, and are of five types: 1) "earth bodies" (prithvikay) that inhabit the earth, stones, and so on; 2) "water bodies" (apk ay) that inhabit water; 3) "fire bodies" (teukay or tejkay) that live in fire (and electricity); 4) "air bodies" (vayukay) that inhabit the air; and 5) plants (vanaspatikay).

Plants come in two general types: pratyek, in which there is one soul per body, and sadharan, in which there are infinite (anant) souls in a given material body. The sadharan or multiple-souled forms of plant life are, in turn, of two types: "gross" (badar) and "subtle" (suksam). The gross varieties include such common root vegetables as potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and yams, and this taxon, therefore, is extremely important from the standpoint of dietary rules. Because potatoes and similar vegetables harbor tiny forms of life in infinite numbers, they are - in theory - forbidden to Jains.^[3] The ban on the eating of root vegetables is one of the principal markers distinguishing Jain vegetarianism from that of other vegetarian groups in India. The plant category also includes tiny beings, infinite in number, called nigods.^[4] They are the lowest form of life and exist in little bubble-like clusters that fill the entirety of the space of the cosmos. They live a short time, perish, and then take rebirth as nigods again (with some exceptions, as we shall see). They are a teeming sea of invisible life everywhere around us, even within our bodies.

Tras beings are classified on the basis of the number of sense organs they have. The viklendriy class, consisting of beings of two to four senses, opposes the pañcendriy class, consisting of beings with five senses. Two-sensed animals have taste and touch; three-sensed animals add smell; four-sensed animals add vision; and five-sensed animals add hearing. A somewhat different principle of animal classification is based on the manner of giving birth. Those born from the womb (and this includes eggs) are called garbhaj. Beings called sammurchim are born by means of the spontaneous accretion of matter into a body. All beings of fewer than five senses are born this way, as are some five-sensed animals and human beings.

Coexisting with (and consistent with) the above scheme is yet another system of classification, and in many ways this is the most important of all. This is the system of the four gatis, the four "conditions of existence." These four categories are: hell-dwellers (naraki), animals and plants (tiryañc),^[5] humans (manusya), and deities (dev). They are ranked on the basis of the relative happiness (sukh) or sorrow (dukb) experienced by the beings within them.

The most miserable of all beings are the hell-dwellers. They exist in perpetual darkness and suffer from unrelenting hunger, thirst, and extremes of heat and cold. They are tortured in various ingenious ways by demon-like beings who perform this function. The punishment is often of the punishment-fits-the-crime variety. Picture books exist in which the punishments for various sins are depicted in vivid and rather disgusting detail, a sort of pornography of punition.^[6] Hell-dwellers take birth (as do the gods) by means of instantaneous creation, and their terms of punishment are eons long. An Ahmedabad informant once told me that hell-beings remember their torments after they are reborn as humans, which - he said - is why babies cry. He then went on to say that the parents give the child a doll to stop the crying, and the child clings to it and says, "mine! mine! mine!" Then, he continued, at the age of twenty-one or so "they give you a bigger doll, and the same thing happens." The result is attachment to family and other worldly things, and so the cycle goes on.

The animals and plants (tiryañc) experience somewhat less misery than hell beings do, or at least this seems to be true of five-sensed animals. However, birth anywhere in the tiryañc category is extremely undesirable. Their natural place of habitation is the world-disc, but they can live in many areas barred to human beings.

Human beings experience more happiness and less sorrow than those in the tiryañc category. As noted already, humans occupy only the restricted central area of the world-disc; they are distributed, of course, between the two moral zones of karmbhumi and bhogbhumi. The humans in bhogbhumi are born as twins of the same sort that exist in our world during the paradisaical age; their lives are spent in sensuous enjoyment, and liberation is impossible for them. Humans can be either womb-born (garbhaj) or born by spontaneous generation (sammurchim). The latter are generated from various impurities (such as excrement, urine, phlegm, or semen) produced by the bodies of womb-born humans. They are without intelligence and cannot be detected with the senses; their bodies measure an "uncountably" small part of a finger's breadth. They die within one antarmuhurt (forty-eight minutes) without being able to develop the full characteristics of a human body.^[7] Certain rules of ascetic discipline are based on the injunction to avoid harming these beings. For example, after eating, some ascetics and extraorthoprax laymen drink the liquid residue from washing their hands and plates or bowls. This is to prevent the spontaneous generation of millions of little replicas of themselves, for whose deaths they would then be responsible, in the meal's remains. Just as the category of multiple-souled plants invests Jain vegetarianism with a distinctive character, this category provides the basis for certain distinctive features of Jain asceticism.

The truly crucial fact about human existence, however, is that liberation is possible only in a human body. As we know, liberation is not possible for all humans, but it is possible only for humans. This is a fact with momentous consequences, as we shall see in the next chapter.

The gods and goddesses are, in some ways, mirror images of the hell-beings. Hell-beings are being punished for their sins; the gods and goddesses are being rewarded for their virtuous acts in previous existences. The question of the cosmic functional niche of the gods and goddesses will be addressed in the next chapter. For now it is sufficient to note that, as are the hell-dwellers, the gods and goddesses are stratified. The lowest are the bhavanvasi's, "those who dwell in buildings," who live in the uppermost of the seven hells but are not subjected to hellish torments. Residing in an intermediate level between the uppermost level of hell and the earth are deities known as vyantar's who inhabit jungles and caves. They can help human beings, but can be malicious, too. The jyotisk deities (planetary deities) dwell in the region between the earth and the heavens above. They belong to two basic categories, moving and stationary.

The most important deities are the vaimanik's, so named because they inhabit heavenly palaces (viman s) of various kinds. They are divided into two basic types. Lowest are the kalpopapan's, those who are born in paradises (kalpa s). Residing in palaces above the kalpopapan deities are the kalpatit deities (without kalpa s), who are of two kinds: the graiveyak's, who dwell in nine palaces above the topmost of the heavens of the kalpopapan deities, and the anuttar's, who live in five palaces higher still. The kalpopapan deities perform the celebrations of the Tirthankars' kalyanak's. They also live in organized societies in which there are kings, ministers, bodyguards, villagers, townsmen, servants, and so on. The kalpatit deities do not participate in rituals and are not socially organized. Goddesses are found dwelling only in the first and second heavens of the kalpopapan deities and below, although they may visit higher heavens. In these lower regions the gods have sexual relations; at higher levels, sexual relations become progressively etherealized: from mere touch, to sight, to hearing, to thought, and finally to no sexual activity at all.^[8]

The Indras are the kings of the gods. There are sixty-four of them in total: twenty who rule the bhavanvasi's, thirty-two for the vyantar's (and a subcategory known as van vyantar s), two for the jyotisk's, and ten for the twelve paradisaical regions. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Indras (and Indranis, their consorts) are symbolically central to ritual action among Jains.