room. The
Jains divide the jivas according to the number of sense-organs
they possess. The lowest class consists of plants, which possess
only the sense-organ of touch. The next higher class is that
of worms, which possess two sense-organs of touch and taste.
Next come the ants, etc., which possess touch, taste, and smell.
The next higher one that of bees, etc., possessing vision in
addition to touch, taste, and smell. The vertebrates possess all
the five sense-organs. The higher animals among these, namely
men, denizens of hell, and the gods possess in addition to these
an inner sense-organ namely _manas_ by virtue of which they are

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[Footnote 1: See _Prameyakamalamarta@nda,_ p. 33.]

[Footnote 2: The Jains distinguish between _dars'ana_ and _jnana_.
Dars'ana is the knowledge of things without their details, e.g. I see
a cloth. Jnana means the knowledge of details, e.g. I not only see the
cloth, but know to whom it belongs, of what quality it is, where it
was prepared, etc. In all cognition we have first dars'ana and
then jnana. The pure souls possess infinite general perception of all
things as well as infinite knowledge of all things in all their details.]

190

called rational (_sa@mjnin_) while the lower animals have no reason
and are called _asamjnin_.

Proceeding towards the lowest animal we find that the Jains
regard all the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) as being animated
by souls. Thus particles of earth, etc., are the bodies of
souls, called earth-lives, etc. These we may call elementary lives;
they live and die and are born again in another elementary body.
These elementary lives are either gross or subtle; in the latter case
they are invisible. The last class of one-organ lives are plants.
Of some plants each is the body of one soul only; but of other
plants, each is an aggregation of embodied souls, which have all
the functions of life such as respiration and nutrition in common.
Plants in which only one soul is embodied are always gross; they
exist in the habitable part of the world only. But those plants
of which each is a colony of plant lives may also be subtle and
invisible, and in that case they are distributed all over the world.
The whole universe is full of minute beings called _nigodas_; they
are groups of infinite number of souls forming very small clusters,
having respiration and nutrition in common and experie