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MAN AGAINST NATURE dowed with its own life-duration, bodily strength, and breathing power, as it goes about perpetually inhaling and exhaling.
The life-monads on the elemental level of existence in the states of ether, air, fire, water, and eartlı) are provided with the faculty of touch (sparsa-indriya). All feel and respond to pressure, being themselves provided with minute extension, and they are known therefore as ekendriya, "provided with one (eka) scnsc-faculty (indriya)." The atoms of the vegetables also are endowed with one sense-faculty (the sense of touch), though with four life-brcaths (they lack speech-power). Such mule, onesense existences are no less the masks or garbs of jīvas than the more complex forms of the animal, human, and celestial kingdoms. This the kevalin knows and sees by virtue of his universal consciousness. He also knows and sees that the faculties of the higher beings are ten: 1. lifc-force or duration (äyus), 2. bodily strength, substance, weight, tension, and resilience (kāya-bala), 3. speech-power, the power to make a sound (vacana-bala), 4. reasoning power (manobala), 5. breathing power (ānāpanaprāņa, śvāsocchvāsa-prāņa), and 6.-10. the five receptive senses of touch (sparíendriya), taste (rasendriya), smell (ghrāṇendriya), sight (cakşurindriya), and hearing (śravanendriya). Some vegetables, such as trees, are provided with a collectivity of jīvas. They impart separate jīvas to their branches, twigs, and fruits; for you can plant a fruit, or slip a cutting, and it will grow into an individual being. Others, such as onions, have a single jīva common to a number of separate stems. Minute animals, worms, insects, and crustacea, which represent the next level of developed living organization, have, besides life-duration, bodily strength, breathing power and the sense of touch, speechpower or the power to make a sound (vacana-bala), and the sense of taste (rasendriya). Their life-duration falls within the span of twelve years, whereas that of the preceding classes greatly varies. That of the fire-atoni, for example, may be a moment (samaya) or seventy-two hours; that of a water-atom, a couple of
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |