An earlier blog post on root vegetables and the Jain diet described how all ensouled organisms possess at least one sense, the sense of touch (sparśa), allowing them to experience suffering related to that sense. Select dietary prohibitions derive from the fact that while some plants are inhabited by only one soul (pratyeka śarīra), others, such as root vegetables, are inhabited by many one-sensed souls (sādhāraṇa śarīra/ananta-kāya). This difference leads to varying moral considerations due to the unequal number of souls and the corresponding levels of suffering.

 

This situation illustrates how sentience extends to organisms far subtler than plants (conventionally understood) in the Jain universe. Categories of embodied souls are referred to as jīvasamāsa, or groupings (samāsa) of souls (jīva) (Gommaṭsāra Jīva Kāṇḍa/G 71). While souls are ultimately qualitatively identical, owing to karmic variations they undergo variations in embodiments, capacities, potentials, and experiences. Any jīva not born into the class of two-to-five-sensed motile (trasa) organisms (humans, nonhuman animals, celestial and infernal beings) takes birth in the one-sensed immotile (sthāvara) class populated by elemental and vegetal organisms.

 

“Elemental organisms” are souls embodied in individual particles of the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air. Accordingly, these organisms are referred to as earth-bodied (pṛthvīkāyika), water-bodied (āpokāyika), fire-bodied (tejokāyika), or air-bodied (vāyokāyika). “Vegetal organisms” includes, but is not limited to, what is commonly understood as “vegetation” or “plants.” This category also contains extremely subtle “submicroscopic vegetation” (Jaini) called nigoda. Nigoda is often translated as “microbe” or “microorganism” but is better rendered as “microplant.” Apart from their miniscule size, the most distinguishing feature of all nigoda is that they are “group-souled,” meaning that they “take birth together, live together, and die together” (Jaini 1927, 55). No other organisms in the Jain universe are so fundamentally interdependent.

 

To understand the taxonomic location of nigoda it is essential to define the subcategories of all vegetal organisms. Vegetal organisms (as well as elemental organisms) are either fine (sukṣma) or gross (vādara). A “plant” is a gross vegetal organism that, unlike nigoda, is “individual-souled” (pratyeka vanaspati), meaning that it has one root or core soul associated with its plant body. A plant may support additional souls (“host”/sapratiṣṭha) or not (“non-host”/apratiṣṭha), but it forever remains associated with one core soul throughout its existence. Some plants may shift from being hosts to non-hosts within a single lifetime, but others, like root vegetables, never cease supporting additional souls (one reason for their dietary proscription). Nigoda are the “additional souls” that, in their gross forms, affix themselves to host plants.

 

Nigoda are uniquely group-souled microplants (pratyeka vanaspati), yet unlike plants, they can be either gross or fine. As already mentioned, gross microplants attach themselves collectively to host organisms such as plants. By contrast, fine microplants permeate the universe unattached to other organisms. Intriguingly, all fine organisms—both elemental and vegetal—are the only life forms “incapable of causing hurt or being hurt by others. They die of themselves, when their age-karma is worked out. They penetrate and pass through every kind of matter, howsoever [sic] gross or solid” (Jaini 1927, 53). This means, technically speaking, that not all—only virtually all—classes of organisms experience suffering. Lastly, microplants are either “eternal” (nitya nigoda) or “transitional” (caturgati nigoda/itara nigoda). Eternal nigodas have only ever existed in the form of nigoda, while transitional nigodas are those that once lived as “higher” organisms but have regressed into the nigoda state, which is considered the lowest form of embodiment for any soul.

 

For a visual representation, see the chart below.  

 

References
Jaini, J.L. 1927. Gommatsara Jiva-Kanda (The Sacred Books of the Jainas Vol. 5). Lucknow: The Central Jaina Publishing House.

 

Tatia, Nathmal. 2011. That Which Is: Tattvārtha Sūtra. New Haven: Yale University Press.