The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c9.88

c9.88

§118. All over the centre world we find the animals of any shape. The one-sensed kinds have been mentioned above already, since the smallest particles of earth, water, fire, wind and plants occur in all parts of the world, no matter whether they are solid or subtle. The two-sensed kinds which are capable of sensing and tasting, the three-sensed which, in addition, are capable of scenting, the four-sensed which are gifted with seeing, and the five-sensed which are even able to hear, all these kinds vary greatly; Pannav. 41 a ff. without having the intention of being exhaustive, counts up to 40 species.¹ The informations given in Utt. 36² are less complete. And yet the classification is crude. Worms appear side by side with shells, many lower insects as having three senses, and bees, scorpions, crickets, flies, etc. as having four. The highest class is formed by the higher animals, though, strangely enough, we are but insufficiently informed concerning their habitats (Pannav. 78 b f.); for merely to say that all two-sensed animals live about water places of the most different kinds, is but relatively true, and yet this statement is repeated for all three- to five-sensed animals, for the latter even twice (Pannav. 84a). The habitats equally serve for the classification of the higher animals, though only secondarily, for their being called water-, earth- and air- animals, or, more precisely, such that move in the corresponding element (*jalayara*, *thalay.*, *khahay*., Sūy. II 3, 22 ff.; Utt. 36, 171 ff.; Pannav. 43 b ff.) goes back to the fundamental discrimination between voluntarily movable and immovable beings, the *tasa* and *thāvara pāṇa*³—the latter comprising the earth- and water- beings and the plants⁴ (a. o. Ṭhāṇ. 134a). The medium or the way of locomotion further leads to speak of the land animals as solid- and multihoofed, as equipped with claws, and as such crawling either breast- or armwise (*ura-* and *bhuya-parisappa*). In Sūy. II 3 we are systematically informed of the first and the later food taken by these creatures as well as by men and lower animals down to the elemental beings and plants.