A famous śloka of the great Hemāċārya thus describes the characteristics of the jīva:
It performs different kinds of actions, it reaps the fruit of those actions, it circles round returning again; these and none other are the characteristics of the soul.
Jīva has further been described as a conscious substance, capable of development, imperceptible to the senses, an active agent, and as big as the body it animates.[1]
In a most interesting note Dr. Jacobi suggests that the Jaina have arrived 'at their concept of soul, not through the search after the Self, the self-existing unchangeable principle in the ever-changing world of phenomena, but through the perception of life. For the most general Jaina term for soul is life (jīva), which is identical with self (āyā, ātman)';[2] and the way in which the category jīva is divided and subdivided, building up from the lesser to the more developed life, certainly bears out Dr. Jacobi's contention; for the Jaina lay stress on Life not Self.
Sometimes jīva itself is considered as a division of Dravya (or substance), its chief characteristic being ċaitanya (consciousness).
The
powers or
Prāṇa
possessed
by Jīva.This conscious sentient principle, jīva or ātmā, so long as it feels desire, hatred and other attachments, and is fettered by karma, undergoes continual reincarnations. In each new birth it makes its home in a new form, and there assumes those bodily powers or prāṇa[3] which its various actions in previous births have entitled it to possess, for the possession or non-possession of any faculty depends on karma. The most perfectly developed jīva has ten prāṇa and the lowest type must possess at least four. Of these ten prāṇa, five are called Indriya prāṇa, since they relate to the senses. They are the sense of touch
