Some Jaina Canonical Sutras c19.8

c19.8

This text is of great importance as a literary piece of work. No doubt it begins with a long and tedious story in the style of the Purāṇas but the nucleus of the work as pointed out by Winternitz is really the dialogue between the king and the monk ending in the conversion of the former (Rāja-praśnīya Sūtra, 65-79). According to Winternitz it is a splendid and lively dialogue in which the monk endeavours to prove to the king that there is a soul (jīva) independent of the body (deha), whilst the king thinks that he has proved the contrary by means of experiment. The king says that he has caught hold of a thief who has been cut up and hacked to pieces, but no trace of any soul has been found, whilst the monk retorts that he is even simpler than some people who wanted to make a fire and chopped up the fire-sticks (Winternitz, *History of Indian Literature*, Vol. II, pp. 455-6). Dr. Barua in his *Pre-Buddhistie Indian Philosophy* (p 295) has made this point clear by saying that it is not possible to separate the soul from the body, pointing out that this is the soul and that is the body. It is possible in the case of a sword and its scabbard.