The Jain philosophy holds that the world is created and maintained by

The correct answer is A) Universal Law. Jainism rejects a creator God. It holds that the universe is beginningless and eternal, and that its order is sustained by the inherent laws of substances and by principles such as dharma and adharma, which govern motion and rest. Nothing outside this natural order is needed to create or maintain it.

• B) Universal Truth: Jainism does seek truth through anekantavada, the doctrine of many-sided reality, but truth is an epistemic idea. It is not described as the cause that creates and sustains the world.
• C) Universal Faith: Faith is a religious attitude, not a metaphysical principle. Jain thought gives it no cosmic creative role.
• D) Universal Soul: Jainism accepts an infinite number of individual souls (jivas), each liberable on its own. A single universal soul that pervades the world is the Vedantic idea of Brahman, not the Jain position.

The concept links to the Mains syllabus under comparative religion and Indian philosophy. Jainism's non-theistic cosmology, together with ahimsa and anekantavada, is a frequent theme in questions on Indian ethics and the pluralist tradition.

Trap: aspirants often pick "Universal Soul" by analogy with Upanishadic thought, forgetting that Jainism is pluralist about souls and has no creator.