Kundakunda

The work

Kundakunda's principal texts are the Samayasara, on the essential nature of the soul; the Pravacanasara, on doctrine and conduct; and the Niyamasara, on the disciplined path. They are composed in Prakrit verse, and are terse to the point of obscurity without a commentary — which is how they are always read.

His characteristic move is the distinction between two standpoints. From the conventional standpoint the soul is bound, acts, and suffers the consequences; from the absolute standpoint it is untouched, pure and always liberated, and bondage belongs to matter alone. Both are held to be true, and the discipline consists in coming to see from the second while living under the first.

Influence and difficulty

For Digambara Jains, Kundakunda stands second only to the tirthankaras, and Digambara mendicant lineages trace themselves to him. His emphasis on the soul's intrinsic purity gives Digambara doctrine a mystical cast that the more schematic Svetambara literature lacks.

That emphasis has also drawn criticism from within Jainism, on the grounds that it can be read as making outward conduct irrelevant — a charge his commentators have answered by insisting the two standpoints are not alternatives between which one may choose. His dates are entirely unsettled, with proposals ranging across half a millennium from the first century CE onward, and nothing reliable is known of his life.