A Critique of the Role and Status of Great Chain of Being in Oriental Religions and Schools of Thought

The great chain of being in most pre-modern civilizations indicates that the downward trend from top to base is the creator of an immaterial and material world. This trend gradually turns sheer delicacy into impurity, sheer unity into multiplicity, non-determination to determination in, absolute into relative and the realm of manifestation into a realm of latency. Using a theoretical- analytical approach and examining the viewpoint of oriental religions and schools of thought in this regard, this study reviews and criticizes the position and relationship between the components and levels of beings in the expositions of the Great chain of being, and then presents a clear picture of the ontology of cosmological order in Daoism, Hinduism and Buddhism.