जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
The gross · roots, bulbs, moss

Bādara nigoda

बादर निगोद · अनन्तकाय

The gross nigoda: onion, sprout, moss, fungus, green ginger, wet turmeric — the anantakāya, bodies with infinite souls that a Jain layperson learns to recognise by their hidden joints and leave off the plate.

Where the subtle nigoda are everywhere, the gross ones need a body to live in: roots and bulbs, radish and ginger and thūhar in the Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama; onion, sprout, moss, fungus, green ginger and wet turmeric in Śāntisūri's Jīva-vicāra. The Jīva-vicāra gives the signs by which to know one — the joints are hidden, the fibres are hidden, it breaks clean in equal parts, and it grows again when replanted.

These are the anantakāya, the infinite-bodied, and the reason a Jain kitchen has no onion or garlic or potato in it: to cut one is to end infinite lives at once. Laypeople are given thirty-two kinds to avoid; the atlas prints the count and not the list.

the lokaskandhaas Jambūdvīpa× asaṃkhyātaaṇḍaraas Bharata× asaṃkhyātaāvāsaas Kośala× asaṃkhyātapulavias Sāketa× asaṃkhyātaone bodyas a houseananta soulsthe nesting — Gommaṭasāra 164–165, the Digambara text's structureeach level holds asaṃkhyāta × the loka's space-points of the nextthe 563 kinds of living being — Jīva-vicāra22 · 6 · 20 · 303 · 198 · 14four are nigoda — and hold infinitely more souls than the other 559one breath: seventeen lives and a fraction, each 256 āvalikā65,536 in a muhūrta — the teachers say seventeen and a halfavyavahāra-rāśinever once trasa · infinitevyavahāra-rāśibeen out, come backSiddhaśilā608 liberated in six months and eight samayas608 leave the first heap in their placethe ledger — the commentators on Gommaṭasāra 197, and the thokaḍāevery siddha there has ever beenthe souls in one nigoda body — infinite times as many, off the frameNigoda: the smallest body, the most soulsa body too small to see, in which infinite souls are born, breathe and die togethereverywhere in the loka; four of the 563 kinds of living beingone body holds infinite times every siddha there has ever been — Gommaṭasāra 196608souls liberated, and 608 out of nigoda, every six months and eight samayas
Nigoda: the smallest body, the most souls — Bādara nigoda highlighted

Measurements and counts

Namedonion, sprout, moss, fungus, green ginger, wet turmeric — Jīva-vicāra 9–10
The signshidden joints · hidden fibres · breaks clean · grows again — Jīva-vicāra 12
To avoid32 kinds, by tradition
Elsewhereradish, thūhar, ginger — Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama

Connected

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समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10