ABSTRACT
The issues in Jaina philosophy developed concurrently with those that emerged in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. The period from the second century bc to about the tenth century ad evinces a tremendous interaction between the schools of thought and even an exchange of ideas, borne out especially in the rich commentary literature on the basic philosophical works of the respective systems. Jaina philosophy shares with Buddhism and Hinduism the aim of striving, within its own metaphysical presuppositions, for absolute liberation (moka or nirva¯a) from the factors which bind human existence. For the philosophical systems of Indian thought, ignorance (of one’s own nature, of the nature of the world and of one’s role in the world) is one of the chief such factors, and Jainism offers its own insights into what constitutes the knowledge that has the soteriological function of overcoming ignorance. Jainism is not exempt from the problem of distinguishing the religious and/or mystical from the ‘philosophical’; the Indian tradition has no exact equivalents for these categories as they are usually employed in Western thought.
