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________________ Anekanta and MadhyamaPratipad NATHMAL TATIA WARDHAMANA Mahavira started with implicit faith in ahimsa and austerities, while Gautama Buddha was impressed by the practice of meditation. The supreme problem of Mahavira was the conflict of ontological doctrines of his time, which led him and his followers to formulate the doctrine of anekanta. The Buddha was troubled about the psychoethical discipline, specially the final end of meditation and the rational adjustment of various codes of life, hedonistic and ascetic, which he characterized as madhyama-pratipad (middle course). The ontological pursuits of Mahavira and his followers led to the discovery of the conflict in the nature of things, and the resolution of such conflict in their theory of anekanta. A real must change and this change is impossible without a mode that has originated, a mode that has passed and also an aspect that continues to exist in order to make origination and passing possible. In other words, a real must have a persistent feature in order to appropriate change, that is, a real must be a substance capable of assuming modes. This is anekanta, that is, the doctrine which accepts many-sidedness of a real which is necessarily continuity and change rolled into one. The Buddha singled out the moral aspect of life and discovered the causal doctrine of pratituasamutpada which traced the final source of life and death in avidya. This causal law determined the ontological
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________________ 8 SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME speculations of the Buddha and his followers. Substance, according to this law, was a myth raised up by imagination. The modes alone were real without any underlying unity. One mode replaces another in unbroken succession determined by causal nexus. The unity is replaced by an infinite chain of self-charged moments in this doctrine of pratityasamutpada which literally means 'origination depending on relevant causes and conditions'. Nothing is independent and self-sufficient in this view. The real is also sunya, that is, devoid of a character which is selfexplanatory without any reference beyond itself. The concept of unity is a composite act of imagination, called up daya-prajnapti, that is, a concept (prajnapti) depending upon (upadaya) other constituent concepts. Nagarjuna, a Madhyamika Buddhist, equates madhyama-pratipad with these three aspects of the real when he says: yaH pratItyasamutpAdaH zUnyatAM tAM pracazmahe / sA prajJaptirupAdAya pratipat seva madhyamA || Another aspect of pratityasamutpada and madhyama-pratipad is the non-acceptance of any of a set of two extreme concepts or views. Nagarjuna pays homage to the Buddha as the promulgator of the negation of all sets of conflicting concepts in the following verses : anirodhamanutpAdamanucchedamazAzvatam / anekArthamanAnArthamanAgamamanirgamam // yaH pratItyasamutpAdaM prapaJcopazamaM zivaM / dezayAmAsa saMbuddhastaM vande vadatAM varam // The Yogacara Buddhist also eulogizes the Buddha's doctrine as the negation of the cognized (grahya) and the cognizer (grahaka). Thus, the madhyama-pratipad, originally a doctrine of life, came to be interpreted by later Buddhist thinkers as a doctrine of reality, from the ontological as well as the epistemological point of view. Anekanta, on the other hand, was an ontological doctrine from the beginning. It was an attempt to explain causation and also a doctrine of relation. A substance can have different modes and yet preserve its unity and identity with those modes. The criterion of unity is inseparability. There can be distinction without difference. Modes are different among themselves and distinct from the substance, but they are not. different from the latter. The relation between substance and modes is identity-cum-distinction. The Buddhist does not agree with the Jaina and consequently fails to find any unity in the knowing, feeling and willing of
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________________ ANEKANTA AND MADHYAMA-PRATIPAD : 9 the same person, which leads him to the denial of the entitative character of personality. Knowing, feeling and willing also are finally rejected by the Madhyamika Buddhist as unreal. Thus, while the theory of anekanta was an attempt at the synthesis of the conflict apparent in experience and reason, the madhyama-pratipad, as interpreted by later Buddhist thinkers, accentuated the conflict and denounced both the extremes as untenable and unacceptable. If anekanta gives an impression of eclecticism, the madhyama-pratipad was made to play a role which it was perhaps not intended to do. 1 OM 112! PALLO VINOON .