270 SKETCH OF THE 



From the details of these nine Tatwas the sum of the whole Jain 

 system may be collected, but they form only the text on which further 

 sub tilties are founded, and they leave the end and scope of all the doc- 

 trine or the attainment of ultimate liberation singularly indistinct. 



The Moksha of the Jains is exemption from the incidents of life, and 

 above all from the necessity of being born again ; but in what state the 

 living principle subsists after it is so exempted, does not very satisfac- 

 torily appear. In one state indeed the bodily individuality remains, or 

 that of Jivanmukti, liberation during life, whilst from most of the subdi- 

 visions of Moksha, it follows that the Siddhas, the pure existences, corres- 

 pond with our notions of spiritual beings, having an impassive and 

 inappreciable form, variable at will, capable of infinite contraction or 

 dilation, and wholly void of feeling or passion. This is not incompatible 

 with their enjoyment of Nirvdn, another term for Moksha, and which, as 

 Mr. Colebeoke observes, meaning literally, extinct or gone out as a 

 fire, set, as a heavenly luminary, defunct as a saint who has passed away, 

 implies profound calm. " It is not annihilation," he concludes, " but 

 unceasing apathy which they, ' the Jains and Suddhas,' understand to 

 be the extinction of their saints, and which they esteem to be supreme 

 felicity worthy to be sought by practice of mortification as well as by 

 acquisition of knowledge." 



Besides the notions exhibited in the detail of the nine Tatwas, the 

 Jains are known in controversial writings by the title Saptabddis, or Sapta- 

 bhangis, the disjmters or refuters of seven positions : more correctly speak- 

 ing, they are reconcilers, or could be so of seven contradictory assertions, 

 evincing a sceptical character which justifies another epithet which they 

 acknowledge, of Syadbddis, or assertors of possibilities : the seven positions 

 are the following : 



