extreme group maintained its unity (Raju, 1985: 105; Basham, 1989: 64;
Chattopadhyaya, 1972: 132; Zimmer, 1951: 210–211; OHI, 1981: 80). Nev-
ertheless, their differences were over minor matters of practice, and without
consequences for intellectual life.
The first Jaina philosophers of individual fame appeared after the great
schism: Umasvati, who compiled the Jaina sutras, and Kundakunda, the second
great authority, both around 200–400 c.e. (Halbfass, 1992: 92). Although the
Jaina oral traditions were not put into writing until about 450 c.e., and both
naked and clothed Jainas were active in philosophy, both branches accepted
essentially the same canon as well as the same leading philosophers and
logicians. This holds true throughout the entire history of Jainism. The Jainas
became active members of the intellectual field, generally following trends
among the Buddhists and Hindus. The early Jaina sutras from the oral tradition
give a sparse picture of the ascetic life of Mahavira, while the full-fledged
scriptures resemble contemporary Mahayana sutras such as the Lotus, full of
cosmic landscapes and huge expanses of time populated by predecessors to the
founder, now elevated in rather sybaritic splendor above a pantheon of Hindu
deities.
Early Jaina metaphysics resembles the Buddhist causal chain leading from
wrong knowledge to bondage in the mundane world. But the Jainas staked out
a key difference early: they accepted the existence of the atman, or self—in fact
a plurality of selves—and argued against the single cosmic self defended by the
Advaitins, just as they disputed later Nyaya proofs of a highest God. For the
Jainas, the self is an extended substance, which varies in size to fit the body in
which it is located. Each self is omniscient, knowing the past and future of the
entire universe; but its knowledge becomes obscured by acquiring a covering
of karma, which is conceived as yet another material substance, something like
particles of defiling dust. Jaina ontology carries on a rather naive realism or
reification, treating abstract conceptions on the same level as material objects.^59
The extreme practices of Jaina penitences were conceived as wearing away
accumulated karma until final release.
Jaina philosophy became elaborated as something like an Abhidharma
classification scheme, but one in which everything is treated as a substance,
including motion, rest, space, and action. This classification of substances is
reminiscent of the Nyaya and Vaisheshika ontologies developed in this period.
The Jainas hit their most distinctive note as they began to criticize other schools
for being one-sided. The Buddhist doctrine that all is suffering is true from one
viewpoint, untrue from another. The same is said about the Sautrantika doc-
trine that everything is fleeting, or the Sarvastivadin claim that everything
is substantial. The Jainas compromised among the various schools in their
intellectual environment. Their epistemology emerged when Siddhasena and
254 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths