is encompassed by the ogdoad of works and sunk in the ocean of sa/m/sara, rises when its bonds are sundered, as the gourd rises to the surface of the water when it is freed from the encumbering clay[415].’—­Moreover, those particles which in turns come and depart have the attributes of coming and going, and cannot, on that account, be of the nature of the Self any more than the body is.  And if it be said that the Self consists of some permanently remaining parts, we remark that it would be impossible to determine which are the permanent and which the temporary parts.—­We have further to ask from whence those particles originate when they accede to the soul, and into what they are merged when they detach themselves from it.  They cannot spring from the material elements and re-enter the elements; for the soul is immaterial.  Nor have we any means to prove the existence of some other, general or special, reservoir of soul-particles.—­Moreover, on the hypothesis under discussion the soul would be of indefinite nature, as the size of the particles acceding and departing is itself indefinite.—­On account of all these and similar difficulties it cannot be maintained that certain particles by turns attach themselves to, and detach themselves from, the soul.

The Sutra may be taken in a different sense also.  The preceding Sutra has proved that the soul if of the same size as the body cannot be permanent, as its entering into bigger and smaller bodies involves its limitation.  To this the Gymnosophist may be supposed to rejoin that although the soul’s size successively changes it may yet be permanent, just as the stream of water is permanent (although the water continually changes).  An analogous instance would be supplied by the permanency of the stream of ideas while the individual ideas, as that of a red cloth and so on, are non-permanent.—­To this rejoinder our Sutra replies that if the stream is not real we are led back to the doctrine of a general void, and that, if it is something real, the difficulties connected with the soul’s changing, &c. present themselves and render the Jaina view impossible.

36.  And on account of the permanency of the final (size of the soul) and the resulting permanency of the two (preceding sizes) there is no difference (of size, at any time).

Moreover, the Jainas themselves admit the permanency of the final size of the soul which it has in the state of release.  From this it follows also that its initial size and its intervening sizes must be permanent[416], and that hence there is no difference between the three sizes.  But this would involve the conclusion that the different bodies of the soul have one and the same size, and that the soul cannot enter into bigger and smaller bodies.—­Or else (to explain the Sutra in a somewhat different way) from the fact that the final size of the soul is permanent, it follows that its size in the two previous conditions also is permanent.  Hence the soul must be considered as being always of the same size—­whether minute or infinite—­and not of the varying size of its bodies.—­For this reason also the doctrine of the Arhat has to be set aside as not in any way more rational than the doctrine of Buddha.