Philosophy In Jain Agams: Reflections on Five Types of Knowledge

The concept of knowledge (epistemology) has been described in great detail within the Jain tradition even before the existence of the concept of valid cognition (Pramāṇa). This description is unique and it is a legacy that we have inherited from the āgama age. This is one of the reasons why many scholars, who were working on āgamas, were attracted towards epistemology. Dr. Nathmal Tatia evaluated Jain epistemology available in āgamas profoundly in the second chapter of his D.Litt. dissertation in about 50 pages in 1951.^[1] After that Dr. Indrachandra Shastri wrote his whole Ph.D. research (thesis) on Jain Epistemology on the basis of Jain āgamas.^[2] Sadhvi Shrutyasha also conducted a research in 1999 on Epistemology where priority was given to Agama based contents.^[3] Interested students can find the importance of Agamas in the study of Epistemology in the above mentioned texts. To avoid unnecessary repetition, this topic has not been dealt with in the present thesis.

According to Jain Agamas - knowledge is the innate nature of soul. Knowledge does not come from outside, it inherently exists in the soul but remains obscured because of knowledge-obscuring karmas. Due to the variation in destruction-cum-subsidence of knowledge-obscuring karma, we find variation in the expression of knowledge in sentient beings. Total annihilation of destruction of knowledge-obscuring karmas manifests in omniscience which is complete exposure of knowledge. Thus, epistemology becomes the basis for the concept of soul in ontology.