Lecture on Jainism

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: University of Delhi
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/011076/1

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Shu R. K Jain Memorial LECTURES ON JAINISM
BY
Professor G C PANDE
Vice-Chancello
University of Rajasthan Sapelet
With a Foreword by Professor R C MEHROTRA
Vice-Chancellor University of Delhi, Delhi
UNIVERS
OUT
G
टिली
20
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
DELHI
1977

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Lectures on Jainisin
Professor GC Pande
1977
Edited by Dr. Sanghasen Singh, Head of the Department of
Buddhist Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi Published by the Chairman, Shri R K Jain Memorial Lectures
Committee, University of Delhi, Delhs. Printed at the Delhi University Press, University of Delhi,
Delhi-7

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-TA
1
Slow enienter i was l_25
Professor G C Pinde, Vice-Chancellor, Rajasthan University, Jaipur, dels cring the first scrios of Shri RK Juin Mcniorial Lectures on the 3rd February 1977 Sitting on the dias arc (from left to right) Professor DS hothiri, Professor R C Mchrotra, Vice-Chancellor, University of Dulhi and Shri Prem Chandra Juin

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FOREWORD
Shri Raj Krishen Jain Charitable Trust has accomplished an excellent task by instituting annual lectures on Jainism in the memory of its founder late Shri Raj Krishen Jain The credit for this goes to Shri Prem Chandra Jain, the son of the founder, who on the occasion of the 25th Nirvana Centenary of Lord Mahavira donated a sum of Rs 50,000/- along with many valulable works on Jainism to our University As per the desire of the donor, the annual bank interest of Rs 5,000/- accruing out of the donation will be proffered to the eminent scholars who deliver original and analytical lectures on some aspects of Jainism
Professor Govind Chandra Pande, who has carved out an important place for himself in the academic and intellectua) world by his historical, philosophical and literary contributions has been our natural choice for the inaugural year Professor Pande has covered a vast field of Jaina Studies by incorporating in his lectures Jaina ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and ontology Those who were present at the lecture were highly apprciative of the pains that Professor Pande had taken in the preparation of the lectures and even more so for the excellent matter in which he delivered the same We are grateful to Professor Pande for having made available to us the manuscript of these lectures almost immediately We are sure that in the published form these lectures would be read with profit hy a much wider range of scholars interested in Jain Studies
The task of organising the lectures had been put on the Department of Buddhist Studies for obvious reasons Jainism and Buddhism, the two great religions of India, originated and developed almost simultaneously They shared a long common history But at the same time, their historical developments differ considerably. While Jainism remained rooted in the native soil

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as a purely Indian religion, Buddhism became an international movement The imperative need of the hour is to provide all facilities to the students of religious studies for thorough, objective and scientific study of all religions This will serve two purposes Firstly, by extending the frontiers of knowledge, we will bave better and quicker social developments and secondly, we will be able to remove all fetters in tbe path of such developments, like supersitions, obscurantism and so on I am glad that Dr Sanghasen Singh has performed his task well in successfully organising these lectures and editing them on behalf of Shri Ra Krishen Jain Memorial Lectures Committee of the University.
June 30, 1977
RC Mehrotra,
Vice-Chancellor, University of Delhi,
Delhi

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PREFACE
It was my proud privilege as the Acting Head of the Department of Buddhist Studies, to have arranged two lectures on Jainism (more precisely Jinism) by such an eminent historian as Professor GC Pande, Vice-Chancellor, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, on the 3rd and the 4th February, 1977 These lectures were held under the auspices of Shri Raj Krishen Jain Memorial Lectures Committee, University of Delhi, Delhi. The lectures entitled 'The Jain Ethical Tradition and Its Relevance' and “The Jain Conception of Knowledge and Reality and Its Relevance To Scientific Thought were well attended and highly appreciated by the newly and fast emerging Indological circles of Delhi/ New Delhi Thanks to Shri Prem Chandra Jain, the Trustee of Late Lala Raj Krisben Jain Charitable Trust, Delhi for his benevolence in instituting Annual Lectures on Jainism in our University The Vice-Chancellor, Professor RC Mehrotra had very kindly presided over the first lecture and the Pro-ViceChancellor, Professor UN Singh on the second Professor DS Kothari, the noted scientist and former Chairman of University Grants Commission, was kind enough to bless the lecture series on the first day of the lectures
The lectures are so comprehensive so as to cover all the major aspects of Jainism viz, religion, ethics, metaphysics, ontology and epistemology These lectures, I am sure, will go down in the annals of Jainology as great contributions both for the initiate and the layman in understanding and comprehending the basic tenets of the teachings of Lord Mahāvira, one of the greatest sons of India
June 20, 1977
Sanghaseo Sibgh, Head of the Department of
Buddhist Studies, University of Delhi,
Delhi

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Foreword
Professor R C Mehrotra
Preface<
CONTENTS
Dr Sanghasen Singh
Lecture 1
Lecture II
}
The Jaina Ethical Tradition and Its Relevance Professor G C Pande
Jaina Conception of Knowledge and Reality and Its Relevance to Scientific Thought Professor G C Pande

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Lecture I
THE JAINA ETHICAL TRADITION AND ITS RELEVANCE
DR G C PANDE
The Sources of Ethical Tradition
Any ethical tradition is rooted at once in belief as well as in practice, drawing its sustenance from the consciousness of values affecting the exercise of will, from the experience of social action and institutions and from the reflective consideration and analysis of such effort and experience Although at the collective level moral belief and practice rarely coincide, it is an essential fact of moral life that practice should seek to attain an ideal in an infinite seeking Moral life presupposes the notion of an ideal which motivates action and unfolds itself with such action endlessly This active moral life is pursued in the midst of institutionalized norms of action and cultural values which place the individual psyche within a world of compulsions and obligations Socially projected obligations can neither be disregarded nor wholly identified with the true obligations of moral seeking While working in and through traditional obligations and institutions, the consciousness of the individual must discover the source of its moral motivation in its own universal and ideal nature and this discovery in the nature of the case must be a perpetually progressive discovery What is more, such a moral endeavour on the part of the individual must lead him to reinterpret, readjust and ultimately to seek to change traditional institutions so as bring them in harmony with growing moral experience Whether such a growth of moral experience takes place on the socio-historical plane and, even if it does in some sense, whether that growth is uniform or linear, are vexed historical questions, into which it is unnecessary to go What is relevant is that moial action occurring at the level

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of individual freedom has a complex dialectical relationship with the world of social obligations within which it takes place. In the western tradition the contiast of individual freedom and the authority of traditional social obligations has often sharpened into conflict and radical change In India, on the other hand, traditional authority has been seldom questioned within the ambit of common social life When great moral and spiritual reformers found their contemporary social ethos inadequate or defective, they tended to create distinct and new sects or communities embedded within the same ageless social and cultural milieu If the expression of moral freedom in terms of social change was thus dampened, it nevertheless found a redoubled expression in the realm of individual spiritual life or else was transmuted into the symbolism of sectarian ritual and ceremonial aiding the cultivation of a subtle attitude which would he distinctive enough for sectarian affiliation and yet so subjectively and symbolically held that it would not be an obstruction to the accustomed traditional way of social life It could well degenerate into moral equivocation but it could equally rise iuto a path of spiritual widsom which disdained to quarrel with the ignorant
Jaina Tradition and the Indian Cultural Milieu
Whatever might have been the source of this social conservatism which tended to increase with time, it certainly lent to the diverse currents within the Indian ethical tradition the aspect of a pervasive unity with but minor shades of difference When the Jaina tradition first emerged into the limelight of history, it did represent a sharp contrast to the existing Vedic tradition but in course of time the Jaina community became a well accepted part of the larger Indian socio-ethical framework Indeed, it has been argued that the very survival of the Jaina tradition unlike that of the Buddhist one has been due to its strong conservatism and its self-imposed limitation on proselytism which enabled it to Cuntinue as it was without seeking to disturb others from being what they were i It will be seen in the sequel that this outlook is fundamental to the Jaina ethos

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The origin of the Jaina tradition has been generally attributed in critical scholarship to a reforming or protestant movement from within the earliest Vedic tradition Hermann Jacobi has, thus, convincingly shown by a detailed comparison of the rules of discipline among the Jaina, Buddhist and Brahmanıcal ascetics that an unmistakable pervasive similarity is noticeable among them 2 It is, in fact, impossible to doubt that these rules could not be wholly independent Whether one or more of these streams have borrowed from the rest or all of them derive these rules from a different common source, remains to some extent a speculative matter Jacobi has already argued quite reasonably that the Jainas could not have borrowed from the Buddhists who represented a chronologically junior sect His argument, however, that the common source could only be the Brahmanical regulations, is not so convincing I had argued nearly thirty years ago that we ought to accept the existence of an ascetic tradition in India prior to the sixth century BC, a tradition which was contemporary with but independent of the Vedic tradition 8 Since then several scholars have tended to identify this hypothetical non-Vedic ascetic tradition with the Jaina tradition prior to Mahāvīra and Pārsva 4 The resultant is only a reaffirmation of Jaina traditional views under the aegis of supposedly historical scholarship Personally I would like to sound a note of caution from the point of view of critical history I have no doubt that the Jaina tradition goes beyond Pārsva but how far and in what shape, remains wholly speculative Vedic texts do refer to ascetics who appeai to have been different from the usual seers and sages but we canuot identify them further We must remember that even the Sānkhya tradition claims to go back to Kapıla in the primeval ages
The impoitant thing to note in this context is that the Vedic tradition accepted asceticism only gradually and with some reluctance Although Sankrācārya has argued that Vedic Dharma or ethos is twofold, Pravrtti-laksana and Nirstti-laksana, a careful and detailed examination of Vedic literature would show that the doctrines of Karman, Samsāra and Sannyāsa are only exceptionally indicated in that literature, a fact which was noticed first of

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all by Dr RG Bhandarkar? These doctrines are all interconnected as one whole and their impact was the most prominent feature of the intellectual ferment of the sixth century BC The great seers of the Upanisads are householders, and the Gītā, the epics and the Dhai masutras accept at best a synthesis where a full life of action in this world could be followed at the last stage by retirement and renunciation The theory of the Four Stages appears to have evolved gradually and the fourth stage was apparently the last to be added This tiadition could hardly be eailier than the age of Buddha and Mahāvīra This conclusion is to be drawn not only from the dates of the Dharmasūtras the earliest of which would not be earlier than the 5th century BC, but also from the way in which the Vedic tradition is referred to in the early Buddhist and Jaina canon The doctrine of renunciation in these works is not the doctrine of Sannyāsa as an Āśrama or stage but as the only mode of ideal life, the life of the householder being nothing more than a concession to human weakness In fact, Brahmacarya as well as Pravrajyā are both treated as absolutes in this literature, not as two out of four stages of life The synthesis of Karmun and Naiskarinya in the Vedic scheme of life does not accept that pessimism for which all Piavrttı is basıcally evil While the Vedic tradition in course of time came to accept the doctrines of Karman and Samsāra and hence could not but accept the validity of Sannyāsa, it never gave up its ageold value of respecting and actively fulfilling social obligations The doctrine of the Three Debts continued to be the basis of Vedic social ethics The Sramanic point of view was totally opposed to it Sramanism did not emphasize the obligations arising from specific social relations and institutions or the needs of social survival and development as having moral inevitability It tended to regard this world of obligations rather as a world of temptations and traced the sense of obligations to the accustomed pressure of habits based on egoistical desires, and interests This point of view arises simply and wholly from an undiluted belief in the doctrine of Karman and Samsāia which constituted the essential and common point of reference of the Sramanic sects I have argued elsewhere that a close analysis of the development of Vedic

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views relating to the soul and afterlife would show that the doctrine of Samsāra seems to have made its appearance in the Vedic circle suddenly and without adequate antecedents in the late Upanısadıc period 8 So new and little known was the doctrine in that circle that the assembled wisdom and priestly learning at the court of Janaka was largely ignorant of the doctrine of Karman It is thus fair to assume that while the older Vedic tradition emphasized the values of social obligations and their fulfilment through ritual and sacrament preparing man for widsom ultimately, there existed by its side another tradition, less known and fugitive, the tradition of Sramanism which was characterized by its doctrine of Samsāra and its attendant attitudes of pessimism and mendicancy Now an analysis of the earliest portions of the Jaina canon reveals that Sramanism thus characterized could well summarize the original Nirgrantha doctrine In this sense it would be correct to say that the Jaina tradition gives us the earliest and most authentic version of an ancient Sramanic stream of thought which can be distinguished from the well known orthodox Vedic tradition
In the sixth century BC this ancient and heterodox tradition acquired a remarkable popularity in north-eastern India The Nugranthas were its most ancient and pristine representatives and their Weltanschauung although primarily ethical was in sharp conflict with the prevailing social ethos of the Vedic tradition How challenging the situation was, we must seek to realize through an effort of the imagination in view of the habit acquired by our later experience of treating such contradiction as part of a syncretic harmony where the orthodox and the heterodox, Vedic and nonVedic traditions cooperate as elements of a larger and catholic Indian tradition It is not intended here to describe the emergence and resolution of this conflict which has been mentioned here only to highlight the fact that the theory and practice of Jaina ethics would not be intelligible unless it is placed in this socio-historical milieu The Niganthas challenged the absoluteness of social obligations, relating them to the lower, egoistical nature and passions of man Against these social obligations they

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placed the obligation of man to follow his own spiritual nature In place of the prevailing religio-ethical outlook which morally recognized and sought to sacramentalize the needs and relationships arising out of the natural course and historical traditions of human life, the Jaina tradition sought to ground ethics on the needs and logic of man's higher spiritual nature It emphasized the curbing of passions, the training of human faculties to follow the self-imposed regulation of spiritual freedom rather than the heteronomy of natural desires and impulses, in short, the realization of spiritual perfection
It may be objected that such an outlook which preaches the renunciation of social obligations could hardly be called ethical in any recognizable sense of the term This objection, however, arises from a particular bias with respect to ethical theory What is essential to ethical endeavour is to seek such regulatory principles of conduct as the human psyche could discover autonomously If action were unreal or wholly determined by natural causes or habits created by experience, it would be vain to speak of ethics The Jainas, however, strongly held that action has reality and relative freedom and that it needs to be regulated by principles which can be discovered through spiritual intuition and through the tradition of wisdom in which such intuition has found expression The Analysis of Action
The Jaina view is said to be the affirmation of the soul, affirmation of action, affirmation of the world' Action or Kiiyā has its source in the innate spontaneity or power (virya) of the soul This purely spiritual power of the soul provides the apperceptive focus (upayoga) to the mental activity which includes diverse conative states and impulses and their resultant disposition and effects Mental activity in turn induces physical motion and the result is the inflow of material particles, in particular, of the infinite and ubiquitous subtle particles of Karman which contact the soul and cover up its parts in diverse ways.10 This is the process of Yoga and Bandha 11 From the innate freedom of the spiritual will to its getting helplessly caught in the meshes of Karman,

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this is the process of action which generates Samsāra Right conduct is the reversal of this process, leading from bondage to freedom It follows, thus, that action is a real complex of spiritual, mental and physical elements with a variable degree of freedom such that the complex may be tending towards its erosion or enhancement 12 In as far as the soul forgets its true nature and follows the directive of desires and passions, it moves downwards and outwards into the vortex of matter and into greater ingorance, bondage and suffering At every level action remains the expression of the soul's energy and its power to cause a real change (Parināma) to itself and its environments 13 The concomitants, direction and result of activity, however, vary greatly When the soul acts through a passion-tainted mind, it gets involved in the obstructive accumulations of matter but it can start shedding this burden and move inwards and upwards
Action is conceived as twofold, as motion (Parispanda) and as change of state (Parināma) 14 The soul in its state of freedom has an innate upward motion15 and a pure change of state in terms of the operation of its infinite qualities of power, knowledge and bliss In the state of bondage the soul is the cause of its own good and evil mental transformations and the motions of the physical body are appropriated by it The basic activity of the soul is its causal functioning in relation to its own states, the making of the soul of itself through its own functioning 16 In all its psychic activity through which the soul determines itself, it functions through its own power and remains within a process of self-determination though its resultant accumulation of matter functions as a concomitant causal factor 17
Rival views denying Action or Freedom
On the Jaina view, thus, action is real and is the expression of the real faculties of the soul making or unmaking it At the same time, action effects a real change in the world Although action simultaneously connects the soul and the world, it does not require that the soul should abandon its autonomy wholly The reality of action and the autonomy of the soul in this regard, are thus

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fundamental Jaipa tenets and form the basis of Jaina ethics Although common sense does not doubt the everyday experience of the reality of free will and of human action affecting the environment, a number of schools and sects in the days of Mahavira and later questioned the truth of such assumptions and advocated naturalistic, deterministic and illusionistic views The Jainas vigorously contested these Naturalism or Srabhāvavada bad many varieties but they all agreed in thinking of nature as a nonrational and non-moral system where human life remained heteronomously determined 18 Materialists went further and held that human consciousness was itself epiphenomenal and human action determined by bodily and sensuous impulses seeking pleasure and avoiding pain 19 Fatalists among whom the Ājivakas were the foremost, were determinists without being naturalists or materialists They regarded the force of Karman as a coiled up potential energy which unwound itself in time and determined the course of life 20 There were many others who denied the very reality of action by arguing its impossibility in view of the nature of the soul The Sankhya, thus, held that the soul is inactive by its very nature The followers of Prakrudha Kätyāyana went further and denied real interaction between the seven elements 21 The position of Advaita Vedānta in later days is in this respect almost similar to Sānkhya
As some of the naturalists rejected the causal law and were fortuitists, their doctrine was rightly condemned as self-stultifying 22 In fact, the whole gamut of views forming the intellectual horizon of the age may be said to have arisen from the attempt to evaluate the principles of causal and moral law as providing a rational basis for the understanding of human life and experience Ancient naturalism did not perceive any rational or intelligible basis for the understanding of natural and human phenomena, it only perceived the stark fact of different things behaving differently, each by an ultimate law of its own nature which defied any further attempt to understand it more generally The materialists were thorough-going empiricists and sought to reduce spiritual reality and rational knowledge to the content and objects

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of sense perception They did not deny the sense of order in things but denied that it had any necessary basis The denial of of any independent rational or spiritual knowledge reduced all morality to mere convenience and expediency, to the mere calculation of pleasure and pain Such an egoistic hedonism became the basis of a new political science in the development of which the materialists or 'secularists' (lokāyata) played an important part At this level the interests of the king tended to represent the public interest of the state in term of its security, prosperity and power Such public interest was called Ai tha and the strategy of attaining it was called the Science of Policies (Nitiśāstra or Dandantti) If sense experience is the sole source of knowledge and sensuous objects the sole reality, it would indeed be difficult to go beyond an ethics of policy seeking to maximize individual and public interest Epicurus and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke, Bentham and J S Mill are examples of such an attitude from the west
The Jainas rejected such an attitude because it ran counter to the facts of spiritual and moral experience Supra-sensuous knowledge and reality are as much a fact as sensuous knowledge and reality If action is observed as bodily behaviour at one level, it is directly intuited as will in self-consciousness That man is responsible for his actions and that moral justice is the ultimate ruling principle of life in a universe which is not hostile to such a principle, this is postulated by the Jainas along with all nonmaterialistic thinkers of ancient India Any theory which implied the evasion of moral responsibility—Kętapranāśa and Akstābhiyagama-was rejected by such thinkers as inadequate to the moral needs of man The only part of materialistic theory which found some support generally related to the concept of public policy and the interest of the state The Jaina views on this would be taken up later
The Doctrine of Karman
The general answer to the moral question accepted by all the non-materialistic schools was in terms of the law of Karman

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The doctrine of Karman extended the causal law to the moral realm It held that good and evil deeds have a necessary causal connection with the experience of happiness and unhappiness Since this is intended in a more than psychological sense there was obviously need for a mediating agency which would connect Karman with its result which might be separated from it widely in time and space Brahmanıcal systems tended to postulate God as the agency which rewards or punishes good and evil deeds Jainism, like Buddhism, however, attributed an unseen power to Karman itself which brought about its result at the appropriate time One implication of this doctrine is that the distinction of good and evil must be held to be objective and independent of subjective relativity Another implication is that action must be held to create an unconscious and persistent force which remains connected with the psyche of the agent and has the capacity of directing it into situations appropriate to its own fruition and controlling the affective reactions of the experiences arising from such situations Beginning as a state of the mind or Bhavakai man, action generates a bodily resultant, dravyakai man or Pudgalakarınan 23 That good and evil are originally distinct states of the mind, is commonly accepted by the Jainas and the Buddhists 24 The distinction is not one of obedience or disobedience to a divinely proclaimed law but one of innate quality which may be subjectively perceived in terms of emotional direction The Jainas and the Buddhists, however, differ in relation to the nature of the force generated by action The Buddhists think of it as an unconscious psychic force, a latent disposition-Vāsanā or Samskāra—which is responsible for the projection of the world which is appropriate to the psyche It is in the idealistic school of Buddhism that this doctrine becomes fully consistent and reaches its highest effectiveness The Jainas, however, think of the resultant of psychic action in terms of an accumulation of matter which is absorbed by the soul This matter is subtle and invisible consisting of extremely minute particles which form infinite aggregates (Varganā) These attach themselves to different points on the location of the soul 25 These Karmic material

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aggregates are of eight basic types" (Thülgmine and mature on different occasions 20 Their maturingoscures or distorts the faculties of the soul This materialistic interpretation of Karman is quite distinctive of the Jaina tradition It has been condemned as primitive and, then again, admired as scientific If we leave aside the details of the Jaina theory such as have been explained by Glasenapp on the basis of Kamagranthas, there would be no doubt that since action is psychophysical in character It must be explained both in terms of the spirit as well as matter The infinite will or Virya of the pure spirit is reduced and transformed in the state of bondage to the threefold Yoga viz , physical, mental and vocal activity which constantly depends on the operation of material factors The Jainas, thus, distinguish dravyavacana and dravya-manas from bhava-vacana and bhava-manas 27 Bodily movement, speech and thought are processes where there is a mutually dependent common participation of parallel components, psychic and physical In this situation whatever one might think of the atomistic and spatial imagery of Jaina theory there can be no doubt this way of looking at Karman as involving an unconscious force arising out of the soul's willingness, but limiting its freedom, linking together the psychic and physical processes and determining the course of experience in terms of its affective dimension, is a plausible hypothesis seeking to explain the facts of moral life 28
The Ājivakas rejected the very facts of will and freedom, of Virya and parākrama though they still accepted the fact of Kai man as a pre-existing force for every individual working itself out inexorably as his destiny through numerous lives This view turns Karman into an irrational mystery by delinking it from its source in human action It denies Knyā and retains only Vipāka and thus turns the causality of Karman into a non-moral causality Basically it fails to see that the freedom of the will does not mean an actual capacity for ensuring intended results, nor is the activity of the will the same thing as the passivity of the psyche in affective experience Man is not free to determine his situation or to obtain or avoid pleasure and pain as he likes, but he is free to

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choose the ends for which he might exercise his will and whatever degree of freedom is left to him by his dispositions
It is
Free will and determinism are, however, so interlocked that the total rejection of either involves the other in difficulties If determinism were rejected totally from the field of action and experience, such free human will would be removed from all contact with the natural world which is inexorably involved in a causal order If such an order were absent, action would be meaningless On the other hand, if action were not governed by this order, it would be irrelevant. Action, thus, presupposes a causal order as well as an autonomy which operates through its interstices and utilizes it for its own ends Human experience somehow combines autonomy and heteronomy, spiritual freedom and materialistic determination This apparent contradiction led some powerful schools to deny the very reality of action and changeful experience To be real the spirit must be eternal and changeless and its involvement in change in the form of action and experience could only be illusory Sankhya and Vedanta both accepted this view and represented for the Jainas still other varieties of Akriyāvāda true that both Sankhya and Vedanta accept the reality of action and change at the empirical level and deny it only at the level of eternity, nevertheless, as the Jainas point out, this position, robs human action of moral responsibility since if the spirit is held to be incapable of action by nature it could not be responsible for any results which might arise from such an alien process, nor could it deserve any experiences which might befall it The denial of Kartṛtva and the acceptance of Bhoktį tva, as in Sankhya, is thus contradictory The acceptance of both at the empirical level and the denial of both sub specie aeternitatis, as in Vedanta, creates a gulf which can neither be explained nor bridged If the soul is incapable of any autonomous activities it must for ever remain subject to its beginningless bondage If, on the other hand, bondage itself is not real, liberation would be clearly meaningless The truth is that the phenomenon of action has paradoxical implications Morality requires the agent to be both free and identical whereas reason cannot avoid accepting the universal sway of

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causality and change In this situation while Vedanta adopted the position of Śāśvatavāda and Akriyāvāda and took the paradox to be an ultimate contradiction, the Buddhists adopted the position of Kşanıkavāda and what they held to be Kriyāvāda The replacement of durable substances by causally determined processes meant that there is action, but there is no agent, just as there are experiences but no persistent experiencer The causal and moral laws become coordinations between different states in a process and both become equally impersonal From the Jaina point of view this wholesale denial of the soul itself is neither true to experience and reason nor consistent with the requirements of morality which can correlate actions and consequences only in terms of a stable agent
The Jaina answer to the paradox of action is itself dialectical To be is to change and yet persist20 and the soul is as much subject to this law as matter The soul and matter are directly the causes of their own changes and are in this sense free from heteronomous determination or interaction with something absolutely distinct 30 Nevertheless they have a beginningless association and their changes provide occasions for the changes of each other In this sense just as reality involves change as well as persistence, action involves autonomy as well as heteronomy The distinction of two levels, Vyavahāra-naya and Niścaya-naya, is accepted but both are accepted as real The soul's association with matter is as real as its dissociation in liberation While wrong action strengthens this bondage, right action tends towards liberation In the state of liberation this duality of right and wrong action is ended and replaced by a kind of action which does not produce any Karmic results.
The Jaina analysis of action, thus, while holding action to be real, seeks to provide a valuational gradation for it At the psychophysical level, the level of what is called Yoga, action is distinguished by its motivation which may be pure or impure This depending on whether it is tainted by the Kaśāyas or not is the level of Vyavahara-naya At this level the psychic activity of the soul attracts matter and absorbs it into the body, senses and

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the mind, thus providing a subtle mesh for the soul The effort at withdrawal from Samsara constitutes the next level
This
effort, as is well known, is twofold It involves restraint or Samvara and rejection or Nirjară This process, again, may be practised in a whole time and whole-hearted manner, or under the constraint of ordinary worldly life, thus giving rise to the two streams of morality, that of the householder and that of the ascetic Above these two levels lies the level of Paramartha or Niscayanaya To this level belongs the life of the perfected ones where the soul shines forth in the glory of its innate omniscience and wholly passionless and selfless spontaneity If the soul is externally entangled at the first level functioning as a Bahirātman, and seeks to withdraw into itself as an Antaratman at the second level, it can only be described as functioning spiritually and yet cosmically at the third level, the level of Paramātman The meaning and relevance of ethics varies at these three levels of the soul
Source and nature of moral knowledge
From where do we derive our knowledge of moral distinctions and how we draw them, are important questions theoretically as well as practically Already in the Kathopanışad a clear distincction is made between the good and the pleasant, the Śreyas and the Preyas A wise person (dhira) chooses the former while the latter is chosen by fools (mudha) Here wisdom or dhi is the source of moral guidance while sensation is regarded as a delusive temptation (moha) Animal life pursues sensation as the revelation of values, though it is also able to follow the dictates of instinct in the matters of self-preservation At the human level the dictates of sensation disregard even the needs of self-preservation Even if we were to regard pleasure as good, we cannot escape the truth that pleasure is fleeting and scarce while pain is frequent and recurrent What is more, pleasure often turns into pain And, then, even while pleasure lasts it induces a restlessness into the mind and a vain craving which not only tends to enslave the mind but makes it unfit for moral and spiritual wisdom To accept sensation as a proper guide in action is to lose one's freedom and

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enlightenment From the point of view of wisdom the life of sensation is nothing except the life of misery, bondage and delusion Thus evaluated sensuous pleasure itself is a disvalue or dulkha, and heya The Jainas formulate quite clearly that desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, are not pure psychic elements, on the contrary, they depend on bodily structures and objects and their presence misdirects the psyche into the ways of spiritual evil The earliest of the Jaina canonical texts, Āyāranga, contains a most eloquent plea for a life above sensuous temptations Similar sentiments and reflections are common in other Śramanic schools and sects and, later on, they find adequate expression in Brahmanical literature also
Since the senses are naturally extrovert (parāñcı khāni), the sense-bound ego is appropriately Bahırātman It has been argued that if the irrational pursuit of sensuous values is obviously unacceptable, a rational programme or calculus (Nītı) of such pleasures and pains could well be the only available guide at the level of common practical life or Vyavahāra In the Arthaśāstra and Kāmaśāstra generally a mixture of Epicurean and Machiavellian tendencies may be seen while in the Dharmaśāstra a more Stoical point of view finds expression These three śāstias were generally held to be in harmony under the assumption that subject to the basic rules of morality, the pursuit of interest and pleasure could well be sought to be maximized as a good A clever, even ruthless, strategy has a place in the sphere of competitive politics and business just as sensuous pleasures have a place in the sphere of leisure in personal life The notions of Artha and Kāma are essentially utilitarian and hedonistic Their acceptance in the essentially ascetic ideology of Jainism as of Buddhism was only as of a necessary evil Since pleasure itself is a snare rather than a good, its rational pursuit could only mean the ordering of life in such a way that one could gradually win freedom from the craving for pleasure and learn to value spiritual freedom as the highest good The rules for the householder are designed to subserve the ends of virtue within the context of sensuous and practical life

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The distinction between the pursuits of good and evil is not a distinction between the careful and careless pursuit of pleasure Taken in itself even the highest kind of pleasure falls within the category of evil this is the consistent view of the Sankhya, Yoga, Nyāya and Buddhism This is also essentially the view of the Jainas, except that like the Vedanta they accept a suprasensuous, purely spiritual bliss which belongs to the nature of the soul In Sankhya, Yoga and Nyāya the soul is wholly devoid of any thing like bliss In Buddhism the soul itself does not exist and the mind ceases in Nirvana But there is a difference between the Jaina and Vedāntic views In Vedānta there is a continuity between the sensuous and the non-sensuous pleasures The Upanisads declare that all beings live on fragments of that great Bliss In Jainism, however, this monistic position is not held and hence the pleasure dependent on the senses and desires i e, material pleasure must be essentially distinguished from the pure pleasure innate in the soul
Since sensuous desires and pleasures are radically evil, the moral quest becomes a negative spiritual quest To understand the evil implied in psychophysical activity and experience and seek to abandon it, this becomes the objective of the wise man Good, thus, comes to be distinguished from evil as the restraint of impulses from their unbridled pursuit, as reason from passion, as spiritual freedom from slavery to the body and senses The first characteristic of moral conduct is restraint or Samvara, which implies the cultivation of discipline and self-mastery as also of askesis in the true sense Sanivara is attained through six means-(1) Guptı or controlled activity of the body, mind and speech, (2) Samuti or care in walking etc, and avoidance of injury to living beings, (3) Dharma or the ten duties of the monk which include forbearance, humility, etc. (4) Bhāvanā or Anupreksā or the twelve reflections on transitoriness etc, (5) Par īşaha or endurance of 22 troubles like hunger etc, 6 Caritra or conduct But the Jainas go beyond mere askesis and consider bodily life as an ultimate evil which must be shed through the destruction of Karman or Nurjarā Nujarā is attained by external asceticism including

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the mortification of the flesh and the practice of virtues, study, renunciation and meditation
Moral life in the usual sense is only a prelude to spiritual transcendence Training in the practice of virtues, the strenuous abandonment of all natural life, total transcendence into the pure perfection of the spirit—these are the three stages of ethico-spiritual development The Jainas have mapped out this whole development into fourteen stages called the Gunasthānas Gunas stand for specific characteristics of the Jīvas as constituted by faith, knowledge and conduct while sthāna indicates a stage of purity Guna-sthānas, thus, stand for particular stages of purity through which the character of the soul evolves False belief is rejected in the second stage while self-control becomes habitual from the sixth Passions are left behind beginning from the eleventh stage and activity finally in the last stage The four causes of bondage-lack of right belief, lack of self-control, passion and activity—are gradually shed in this process That these factors are abandoned in this order is not necessary since the order of the Gunasthānas need not be chronological In any case, self-control, dispassion and freedom from psychophysical activity constitute the three basic stages Reflecting over this course of moral and spiritual life outlined by Jaina seers and thinkers we would see that in the ultimate analysis the concept of the good is the concept of what ought to be attained while the concept of evil is the concept of what ought to be abandoned or avoided This knowing and avoiding are together termed 'comprehension' or 'Parijñā' The good ultimately is the spirit and the evil the contact of the spirit with matter Out of this contact arise desires and passions, delusion, egoism, activities motivated by them, and violence All these constitute and generate evil On the other hand, nonviolence, restraint and selfcontrol, equanimity between self and others, rational discrimination, dispassion, etc, constitute virtues All these could be described under the subjugation of the body, senses and the mind and detachment from their bondage
Such a notion of morality does not distinguish it from spirituality It is often assumed that morality characterizes social behavi

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our while spirituality relates to man's inner and personal life Alternatively one could say that morality regulates man's relations with other men and is an essential strand of the social order Spirituality, on the other hand, characterizes man's relation with himself or God This distinction between moral and spiritual values in terms of social and inner or personal life is not very tenable because quite often it has been held that even mystical life and discipline presuppose a tradition of interpersonal relations while the sense of right and wrong undoubtedly continues so long one has to engage in activity consequential for oneself and other living beings Human actions and relations extend far beyond the externally observable human society and its interactions Jainism conceives the operation of moral rules to extend to man's relations with subhuman and superhuman living beings as well as to his dealings with himself at different levels Morality requires the sense of obligation arising out of the perception of a universal rule in the course of willing an object The rule indicates what one ought to choose. The only two essential dramatis personae in this situation are the lower self and the higher self This tension of the actual and the ideal self is both necessary and sufficient for the emergence of moral consciousness Without this distinction, the distinction between self and other becomes unavailing Again, in so far as the lower self wills to act at the level of actuality in accordance with a law derived from its own ideal nature it may be said to be involved in moral action On the other hand, in so far as the self seeks to transcend its lower actuality and realize its ideal nature in terms of being or immediacy, it may be said to be engaged in a spiritual process Between acting by a higher law and seeking to become higher, one cannot draw any fundamental distinction The distinction of the categories of the moral and the spiritual is, thus, more a matter of moment than of substance
The important question, of course, remains-can we give any accout of the higher law or the universal rules, the perception of which obliges the will to necessarily choose one kind of object rather than another without jeopardizing its freedom The law

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is obviously a universal law comprehensible to reason or intuition rather than a mere inducement to natural inclinations It is equally obvious that the law is radically different from any external pressure or the pressure of desire or temptation Its obligation is in some sense self-imposed or self-accepted, i e, the will chooses its objects as indicated by the rational approval of the whole personality rather than as impelled by the fragmentary and irrational force of desires
The orthodox Vedic school of the Mimāmsakas held that the moral rule or Dharma is of the nature of a Vedic prescription revealing a good The good has the sense of something valued, something desired as well as approved, an artha Vedic prescriptions are at once verbal commands and activating causes They are held to be of an eternal and impersonal nature Their disregard generates evil while their acceptance may produce merit or destroy sins
This traditional Vedic conception of the moral law is essentially the conception of following one's duties understood in terms of an impersonal and immemorial social tradition The doctrine of an eternal and impersonal ethos is only a metaphysical projection of this socio-ethical doctrine which is adapted to uphold and ritualise the obligatory forms and structures of a varied and concrete social tradition Jainism rejects this notion of revelation as the source of moral knowledge just as it rejects sensation and calculation as the means of discovering what is good for man The source of morality or caritra is in knowledge and faith which are the natural powers of the soul The source of evil is the Karmic obscuration of these powers The ultimate form of this knowledge is Kevala-jñāna and from that arises the tradition of scriptural knowledge or Śrutajñāna Of these, Śruta-jñāna is verbal knowledge, conceptual and indirect On this view right action depends on right knowledge ie, what we ought to do comes to be indirectly a function of what there is In fact, the function of knowledge is only to remove the obstructions in the way of action taking place in accordance with the nature of its subject as well as its direct and indirect objects Dharnia or

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moral law is nothing but the natural form of action or Caritra Cantra is action and being in accordance with nature Since the nature of things and of its ownself is obscured for the soul by ignorance, knowledge is a sine qua non of right action Since the force of wrong action in the past has also to be countered, right knowledge needs to be strengthened by right willing and effort against contrary habits and instincts
Of the nine padārthas, sin and virtue are held to be reducible to äsrava and bandha which are psychospiritual relations and processes Āsrava and Bandha are only the Vaibhavika paryāyas of the Jiva while Samvara, Nu jarā and Moksa are its syabhava paryāya Soul and matter are the only two substantial reals AU the other categories, Padāi thas or Tattvas, are only their relations and changes produced by such relations One might go further and say that the soul is the only moral and spiritual category When the soul acts independently by its own nature, it acts rightly When it acts under the influence of matter, it acts wrongly and dependently and enters that self-perpetuating cycle of evil which is called Samsāra Judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, are thus reducible to judgements about the states of the soul and their dynamics
It will be clear that Jaina ethics does not convert the moral realm of values, norms and obligations into an independent and autonomous realm with irreducible objects, neither material nor spiritual, but apprehended as they are in a unique mode of awareness Nor does it reduce moral categories to disguises worn by material facts and natural processes It reduces moral phenomena to the workings and states of the soul in so far as it struggles with its bondage and seeks to be itself Jaina ethics, thus, is squarely grounded on Jaina metaphysics It rejects the inevitability and ultimacy of sensuous values and does not accept ordinary common sense or social opinion as the basis of moral judgement. Jaina ethics is not the abstraction of an actual social ethics Nor does Jaina ethics have a theological basis as in the case of the Vedic tradition The contrast with Buddhism, again, is worth mentioning For the Buddhists right and wrong are dispositions of

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the will and are discoverable by anyone in terms of the emotional tone which accompanies the acts of the will Ethics here has a a purely psychological basis The Akusala hetus or wrong motives are parallel to the Kasayas of the Jainas but whereas the Jainas look forward to the soul realizing its true nature, the Buddhists deny the soul itself and are left with a classification of psychic states on the basis of their intrinsic nature as good and evil
The philosophical outlook of the Jainas is realistic and dialectical 32 They emphasized the category of being as well as of change. For them, to be is to endure and yet to change This acceptance of the reality of change and activity saves Jaina Philosophy from falling a prey to the eternalist denial of action and hence ultimately of ethics On the other hand, the equal emphasis placed on substantive endurance gives Jaina philosophy the notion of an ultimate standard by which to judge the worth of change and regulate its direction What is ultimately real, the eternal nature of the spirit, becomes the ideal for the process of change and activity Thus 'Dravyarthikanaya' tends to become the 'Niścayanaya', while 'Paryāyārthikanaya' becomes 'Vyavahāranaya' The point of view which considers changing states to be real is relevant to practical activity On the other hand, the point of view which concentrates on the underlying enduring reality is significant for reaching ultimate spiritual convictions or absolute truth in so far as it may be possible The Jainas admit that the states of a substance need not always express its own nature It may be influenced by its relationship with an alien substance This acceptance of an interacting plurality in addition to the reality of change procduces a situation where changes grounded in the nature of the substance itself are upheld as ideal while changes arising from an alien contact are held as evil The forcible, and distorting impact of the activity of one substance upon another is the basic meaning of violence Matter does violence to the soul by obscuring its faculties and leading it in time to participate in a similar species of causal activity in relation to other souls This activity being an activity of the soul has a necessary moral character while being of the nature of forcible

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intervention in the being of other souls regardless of their feelings or nature becomes ethically evil. This is 'Himsa' an activity of the soul induced by matter and heedless of the true nature the soul and of the sameness of this nature for all the souls
It is true that the souls belong to different levels of evolution, from the purely sensitive and wholly irrational to the wholly rational levels devoid of emotional sensibility Nevertheless it is true of all the souls that their good lies in the realization of their own nature which is universal and that this can only be achieved through their remaining free from external interference Since the souls are ubiquitous, dwelling even in the elementary forms of matter, the scope of violence latent in human action may well be imagined Early Jain scriptures tend almost to identify 'Karma' with 'Danda' and 'Himsa'. The reality of action, the endurance of its spiritual agent, the self-conscious and rational nature of the spirit, the element of freedom and expressiveness in action, these together provide a necessary and sufficient basis for the notion of moral responsibility The Jain metaphysics of the soul, thus, provides us with the reality and responsibility of action, a criterion for distinguishing right and wrong action and, within the powers of the soul, a source of knowledge, adequate for discovering and understanding moral distinctions
Just as the Jaina theory of Karma has been criticized as materialistic, the Jain theory of soul has been criticized as animistic The Jaina certainly attribute location to the soul in the same sense in which illumination may be said to have location This enables them to connect atoms of 'karma' with points on the extension of the soul. Extension, however, is attributed to the soul, indirectly only in the sense that the body which the soul pervades has extenThe essence of the soul remains psychic or self-conscious The mind is not accepted as a non-material reality, although soul and body are distinct as substances and their changing states remain interdependent It is in this situation that the moral struggle of human life takes place The soul may be embodied with all the attendant limitations as well as gratification, nevertheless it can never be content in this condition In this sense
sion

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moral life is only a search for a natural life in the midst of unnatural modalities The very unnaturalness of empirical life where the soul finds itself acting under the influence of matter is an assurance that the soul should be able to shed evil, ultimately move from an imperfect will to its innate perfection
It has been held that freedom, immortality and God represent three necessary presuppositions of morality Freedom and immortality are obviously well preserved in Jainism God, however, is rejected, His place being taken up, partly by Karma and partly by the perfected soul in the state of omniscience and functioning as a moral teacher The theory of Karma postulates a sufficient causal connection between present good and evil actions and their distant consequences in terms of happiness and unhappiness This connection in the absence of an all powerful divine agency remains mysterious to the understanding of the two functions of God for the moral life, viz ensuring a just order where men get their deserts and presenting a realized moral ideal of perfection, while the first function is thus reserved for 'Karma' in Jaina theory, the second is performed by the soul itself in its ideal or perfect state, exemplified objectively in the lives of the saints The normal danger of the acceptance of God in theistic religion is that it slackens the moral will and effort on account of the sense of sin or diffidence or the desire to rely on God and place one's burden on Him This danger is altogether avoided by Jainism which makes a clarion call for total self-reliance "You are your own friend Why do you seek a friend from outside ?"
In this sense, in its activising emphasis on self-reliance and its synthetic and relativistic dialectics, the Jaina tradition has obvious relevance to the contemporary situation The ethical perspective of our own times has been fashioned by the forces of humanism and secularism, individualism and democracy, and emphasis on changing socio-historic conditions The moral consciousness of the modern man seeks to determine right and wrong within the web of conflicting social duties and loyalties as presented by his historical situation This point of view is at once egoistic and Socio-centric, sensebound and historical, rational and calculating

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It corrects the pettiness of the individual's search for pleasure by the search for the more indirect satisfactions of the community in the future From gross hedonism to the sense of social service in the most impersonal context such as illustrated in Goethe's 'Faust, runs the gamut of moral consciousness in modern times In the absence of any belief in revelation, intellectual intuition, pure and yet concrete reason or in any other kind of transcendence, modern thinking is inexorably led towards some kind of ethics with a psychological base In seeking an empirical ethics which would be relevant to our changing social experience, we tend to lose the element of necessity and universality which morality demands On the other hand, in searching for moral necessity in the empty forms of language, logic, or law, we run the opposite danger of having an ethics irrelevant to our social situation In Jainism we find an attempt to combine concrete empirical content with the necessity of principles, the former apperceived in terms of a sensitive spiritual discrimination and the latter provided by the philosophically understood principles of being itself There is here a union of phenomenology and ontology, of an acute analysis of moral experience with an equally thorough going analysis of spiritual being We must remember that the whole idea of an ethics independent of ontological or metaphysical assumptions has arisen, not from a deeper apperception of the characteristic moral quality of experience, but from philosophical agnosticism, religious doubt or disbelief and a worldly philosophy of life which has itself arisen partly from the acceptance of the dominance of sensuous values in common life, partly from the dazzling success of natural reason and empiricism in science and partly from the need to avoid religious conflicts in social and political life Since all these factors were more or less absent from the historical tradition of India, the traditions of ethical practice and reflection here have continued to maintain their organic link with metaphysics and religion The Jainas with a synthesizing dialectic have been able to preserve a system which is at once rigorous and adaptable to practical needs
If the Jaina monk seeks to live by a total denial of property,

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sex, egoistic family relationships and violence, the Jaina laity has always been a prosperous and powerful community where rulers, ministers and merchants have lived a full and successful life I have argued elsewhere that the spirit of what may be described as an ethical or spiritual humanism pervades the notion and reality of Jaina lay life 33 Modern humanism is based on the assumption of natural egoism which seeks to satisfy itself through science and social organization 34 The humanism of Jaina lay life is based on the assumption that if one engages in sensuous and social life within self-imposed restrictions, this very experience gradually tends to free the mind by revealing to it pleasures and pains of such life in their true perspective The doctrine of Anuvratas is consistent with the bodily and social needs of men and also serves to train them towards the Mahāvratas in due course of time
Of all the Mahāvi atas the first and the greatest is Ahimsā It has been called the ultimate essence of Dharma or righteousness by the Hindus, Buddhists and the Jainas alike And yet it remains undisputed that the Jainas have laid the greatest stress on it In the Brahmanical tradition the sacrificial religion is obviously inconsistent with the spirit of Ahimsā The Manusmı tı praises the Nuvrttıdharma as of great merit but allows the different Pravrttıdharma as without fault Sānkhya, Yoga, etc , fall within the Nivsttidharma and are in line with Buddhism and Jainism as sharing the common Śramanic outlook The Jaina doctrine of Ahimsā is distinguished by its apparent extremism arising from the peculiar Jaina doctrines of the soul and Karman which have been mentioned before The Jainas, again, continue to be the most important exponents of the doctrine today and in view of the popularity given to the idea of Ahusā by Gandhiji it should be useful to examine it a little
Ahimsā has been described as the chief of the 'Vratas' Vrata again has been defined as a deliberately adopted rule laying down what is to be done and how it is to be done, thus excluding what is not to be done The 'Vrata’ thus becomes in effect an avoidance or a 'Virati' It has been described as a psychic state consisting

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in withdrawal or 'Nivrttipariņāma' It is not, however, wholly a negative concept Deliberately engaging in good action in accordance with a rule also falls within the scope of Vrata That is why Vratas are not subsumed within 'Samvara'. Vratas include positive actions (Parispandātmaka) From the standpoint of 'niscayanaya', 'Vrata' is really a withdrawal of the will from alien objects and willing the self and dwelling within it Externally it implies compassion on beings while subjectively it means the abandonment of the passions In this sense, Vrata is the same as the purification of conduct-'Caritra' According to the range of the objects to which the Vrata applies it is divided into the two categories of 'mahāvrata' and 'anuvrata' Thus, 'Ahimsa' as an 'anuvrata' implies withdrawal from gross violence and behaviour, whereas as a 'mahāvrata' it implies withdrawal from all evil of the nature of violence at any level-mental, vocal or physical-whether done personally or caused to be done by another or approved
'Himsa' has been defined as destruction of life through 'Pramāda' The emergence of 'Pramada', of 'raga', 'dvesa' etc, itself has also been called 'Himsa' Such psychic states are truly suicidal and with this violence to one's own nature we have the starting point of all violence to others In fact, one may as a deliberately cultivated mode of austerity, even give up one's own life That would not be 'Himsa' or violence, whereas even the efforts at saving one's life through unbridled passions or taking the lives of others, whether plants or animals, would amount to Himsā The inner root of 'Himsa' is forgetfulness of one's spiritual nature and from this arise desires, fears and hatred, and they lead men to outward action, inflicting injury on other beings
For strengthening the vow of Ahimsă, five bhāvanās have been prescribed-Vaggupti, Manogupti, Iryasamiti, Ādānanıksepanasamiti, Alokitapānabhojana-that is to say, care in speech, thought, movement, food and drink Again, one must reflect on the evil consequences of Himsă, and the pain it produces Violence leads to loss of peace and enmity here and worse evils in after-life The painful consequences of violence for others

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must be contemplated on the analogy of violence to oneself Without such a sense of equality or universalization of the subject it is impossible to really practise virtue Again, friendliness must be cultivated for all beings and compassion for all those who suffer The Jaina notion of Ahimsā, thus, as the first of the Mahāvratas or universal moral rules is that of a pure spiritual will which only wills the self and not alien, material things Externally, this pure will expresses itself in friendliness, compassion, helpfulness, etc, and leads to the avoidance of all the acts of violence which are contrary to the spiritual nature of the agent or of the objects towards which the action is directed, or for whom it produces consequences Purity of the will, recognition of one's own sprutual nature, recognition of the similar and equal nature and claims of all other souls and a steadfast and strenuous effort to regulate actions in the light of such recognition -- this constitutes the process of 'Ahusa'
It will be already clear that the effort to distinguish Jaina from Buddhist Ahimsā on the ground that the former is negative while the latter is positive or that the former concentrates more on physical behaviour, while the latter on psychic activity, is not correct The Jainas as much as the Buddhists see the test of Hinisã and Ahimsa in the direction of will The excessive attention given by the Jainas to details of bodily behaviour is due to their doctrine that souls are to be encountered almost anywhere This has even been ridiculed and it has been asked “There are living beings in water, on land, in the sky, the whole world is agitated by the waves of living beings, how can the monks be free from Himsā ?” This has been answered by drawing a distinction between gross and microscopic living beings The microscopic beings are not easily injured and it is the other kind of living beings which need to be protected
Apart from the control of violent emotions or actions towards other human beings, the principle of Ahimsã in Jainisni implies vegetarianism There can, however, be no doubt that the use

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of meat for the sake of pleasure or habit or normally, is clearly contrary to the teachings of Buddha as well as Mahavira It is also clear that the Jaina monks strenuously avioded the use of meat on principle36 Nor can there be any doubt that Jainism has been a principal factor in the spread of vegetarianism in India
Since Mahatma Gandhi the most important question discussed about Ahimsă has been its relevance to political life The two questions which arise in this connection are-can the government function without using violence to punish crime, can international disputes be settled peacefully?
A perusal of Jaina writings on politics such as Somadeva's Nitivăk yāmrta and Hemacandra's Laghiyai hannītı which claims to summarize Mahāvīra's advice to Bimbisåra, would reveal that the basic principles of the Arthasāstra are acceptable to Jaina scholars who only emphasize the King's duty of helping the cause of Jaina faith, being just and impartial and avoiding war as much as possible They do not envisage that the state can enforce laws or ensure the security of the country without violent punishment or war It is only in the prehistoric, mythical ages that men lived without violence and did not need the coercive machinery of the state As men declined in virtue this coercive machinery became necessary and has come to stay in the present epoch of history87
It is obvious that the practice of Ahimsă presupposes a person and a context where the loss of material things, social position or even life would be acceptable in view of a superior consciousness and its ideals This is a context where the egoistic and acquisitive attitudes are subordinated to the attitudes of transcendence, acceptance and giving up Now the political context is inherently different The state is not a person but an impersonal machinery charged with the duty of maintaining order and security and authorised to use violence as an ultimate resort The spread of pacifism can become effective only if human nature is sufficiently educated morally and spiritually not to seek the settlement of disputes even at the expense of others In other words, unless the

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Jaina ideal of equality between oneself and anothei is distributively realized in a society, the ideal of non-violence can not be effectively adopted collectively Reversing Plato's dictum we might state that the individual is the state in miniature and the way to establish justice in society is to establish it in the heart of each and every one “Darmasya tattvam nihitam guhāyām”
REFERENCES
1
ZDMG, 38, p 18, "Sie waren gewisser-massen versteinert' (Jacobi) Introduction to SBE XXII
2
3
Studies in the Origins of Buddhism
4 eg, Dr HL Jain Bhai atiya Samski ti men Jaina Dharma la Yogadana
(1962)
5
Commentary on the Bhagavailgita
6 7
Studies in the Orgins of Buldhus. A Peep into the Early History of India
8
9
Studies in the Origins of Buddhism Ayaranga, 115—“Se āyāvāt logāvāí, Kammāväi, Kiriyāvāl' Cf Silanka's comment on this-. "Tathā ya cva Karinavādi sa eva Kryivādi, yata h Karma voganimittam badhyatc, yogasca vyāpārah, sa ca Ksyārūpah Ksyām ātmaparınati-rūpām " (p 20, Bombay, 1935)
10 CE “Ogādha-gadha-nicido puggala-Kāychın savvado logo suhumchi
bādareli ya Appãoggehim joggelim" (Pravacanasāra, II 76) The question has been raised-how can 'amūrta' soul be bound by 'murta' karma-pudgalas? In answer, the contact of soul and matici in experience is adduced by Kundakunda Amrtacandra goes to the heart of the matter and says that the bondage is really in terms of psychological identityअात्मनो नीरूपत्वेन स्पर्शशून्यत्वान्न कर्मपुद्गल महास्ति सम्बन्ध एकावगाहभावावस्थितकर्मपद्गल निमित्तोपयोगाधिरूढरागढपादिभावसम्बन्ध 44-gę T-471f-3777T-AT2#fakchai (Piaracanasāla p 216)

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The tainung (uparāga) of the soul by the passions is bhāva-bandha, the attachment of more material particles to the pre-existing ones in the soul on this account is dravya-bandha, Pudgala-jīva-bandha is the 'copervasion' anyonyāvagāha) of spirit and matter यस्तु जीवस्यौपाधिको मोहरागद्वेपपर्यायरेकत्वपरिणाम स केवलजीवबन्ध य पुन जीव-कर्म-पुद्गलयो परस्पर-परिणाम-निमित्तत्वेन विशिष्टतर 4F9THATTE Tag TFET' I (Ibid, p 219)
11 Akalanka on Tattvārthasūtia (6 1-2 Kāyavānmanah-karma-yogah, sa
āsravaḥ)— Viryāntarāya-jñānāvarana-ksya-Kşāvopašamāpeksena ātmānātmaparināmah pudgalena ca svaparıņāmaḥ vyatvayena ca niścayavyavahāra-nayāpekṣayā kryata 11 karma Kriyāparināminah ātmanah trividha-varganā-lambanäpekşah pradeśa-parispandah" (Tattvärthavārtiha, Vol II, pp 504-05), Bhagavatı 33—names of types of KriyāKāyiki, Ādhiharapiki, Prādveşıki, Pārītapaniki and Prānātipatiks It adds that Kriyā arises, पमायपच्चया जोग निमित्त च ।
12 "Āinaparināmena yoga-bhāva-lakşanena hriyata iti karmia Tadātmano
svatantrīkārane mülakāranam Tadudayāpādıtah pudgala-parināmah ātmanah sukhaduhkhabaladhānahetuh audārıkasarırādıh isatkarma nokarmetyucyate” (Akalanka op cit, Vol II, p 488)
13
FOTAIST TETT FEUTIHT TITETTHETET": (Pravacanasāra, 2 88)
14 Sometimes Kriya is identified with Parispanda and contrasted with Pari
nāma which is called the alternative modality (Bhāva) of substance (dravya)-4kalanka, op cit II, p 481 Kundakunda identifies Karma, Pannāma, Kulă (Pravacanasāra, 2 29-30)
15 "Siddhiyatānārdhva-gatireva"
(Akalanka op, cu, Vol II, p 490)
16 Praiacana sāra, II 92-99
17 Sama yasāra (3 96) Later (3 112) it goes so far as to say
"तम्हा जीवोऽकत्ता गुणाय कुव्वन्ति कम्माणि"
18 Cf Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, pp 338ff

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31
19 Cf Haribhadrasuri, Saddarśana Samuccaya
20 Cf Studies in the Origins of Buddlusm 1 c
21 Cf Suyagada, 1 1 13-16, 12 28-40
22 eg Silanka's Commentary on Suyagada 1 c
23 Cf Samayasāra, 3 88-91, Cf Amrtacandra ad Pravacanasāra, 2 30
24 The Buddhists use the word cetana, while the Jainas speak of Bhava
25 eg Pravacanasāra, 2 86
सपदेसो सो ग्रप्पा तेसु पदेमेसु पुग्गला काया ।
पविसति जहायोग्ग चिट्ठति हि जति वज्झति ॥
26 These are Jñānāvarana, Darsanāvaraṇa Vedaniva, Mohaniya, jus, Nāma, Gotia, and Antaraya These are subdivided into 148 Uttara prakrtis-Sse Glasenapp, The Doctrine of Karman in Jaina Philosophy, pp 5ff, (Bombay, 1942)
27 Bhāva means Parināma or mode, while Dravya means substance
28 Cf " we can say that the Sankhya-Yoga (the Vedantin also included) admit only material karman and not its spiritual counterpart as well while the Buddhist admits only the spiritual counterpart and not the material Karman Karman, in the ultimate analysis, is a link between spirit and matter, and lasts as long as the worldly existence lasts (Nathmal Tatia, Studies in Jaina Philosophy, p 208)
29 'Utpada-vyaya-dhrauvya-yuktam sat' (Tattvar tha, 5 30)
30 Cf Samayasāıa 381-83
31 Cf Taittiriya Up. 2,7, Ibid, 36, Cf Pañcadaśī (152) " अन्यानि भूतान्येतस्य मात्रामेवोपयु जते ।। "
19
32 Several modern scholars have expressed the opinion that the Jaina dialectic provides the basis for the Jaina emphasis on Alumsā—c g Dayanand Bhargav, Jama Ethics, pp 108-09 Dr K C Sogani, Ethical Doctrines in Jamism, Preface

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33 On Kuvalayamala’, Junasa
34 Cf my 'Naume and Process of Culture' Tradition and Modernity
35 Dalsukha Malvania-The distinction between Abimsā and Himsā rests
on Apramada and Pramãda, not external violence-(RC Dwivedi, ed , Contbuton of Jamsi 10 Indian Cultme p 111
36 Prof SB Duo, Histon
commentators
of Jama Monachusin p 173, agrees with the
37 On Jaina Political Thought, see--Somadevasuri Nitivakyām ta, Hema
candra Laghvarhanniti

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Lecture II
JAINA CONCEPTION OF KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY AND ITS RELEVANCE TO SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT
DR G C PANDE
In the earlier lecture I had argued that an ethical theory must reconcile the freedom of the moral agent with the necessity of the moral law and at the same time reconcile the universality of the moral law with its applicability and relevance to concrete and individual situations of practical life I had concluded that the success of Jaina ethical theory lies in its interpretation of moral life in terms of the dialectic of spiritual seeking I had also argued that Ahimsā, the central term of this seeking, ought to be interpreted as spiritual autonomy or non-interference As moral life presupposes right knowledge, Jaina ethics is really based on a distinctive theory of knowledge and being Here, again, the theory is called upon to reconcile the rational certitude of scientific knowledge with its experiential corrigibility This synthesis of definitive judgment and experience as cooperative moments in the growth of knowledge aspiring towards their complete union in the synoptic vision of Kevalajñāna is made possible ultimately by the Jaina theory of dialectic or Syādvāda
The Jaina conception of knowledge is distinguished by a realism which accepts both reason and experience as sources of valid knowledge On the one hand, it believes that perfect and ideal knowledge is not only meaningful as a theoretical idea but attainable as a spiritual experience On the other hand, it accepts the essentially empirical notion of actual knowledge being limited and corrigible in view of the infinity of reality and the vicissitudes of actual human experience This combination of rationalism and

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empiricism gives to the Jaina conception of knowledge a remarkable power and a peculiar suitability for serving as a philosophical basis for scientific thought It need hardly be stressed at this stage that the development of science has been possible only through a simultaneous emphasis on experience as well as pure reason While the rationalistic tradition in the west going back to Plato discovered the paradigm of knowledge in mathematical reasoning, modern empiricism from Bacon onwards helped the growth of physical sciences by stressing the role of controlled observation The two streams were congruent in the matter of verification which combines reasoning as well as experience Thus it was Kant who argued that the nature of the scientific judgement lies in its being synthetic and a priori It has, on the one hand, the necessity and universality appropriate to a purely rational law Pure mathematics and logic illustrate this aspect of scientific knowledge On the other hand, scientific knowledge, and the laws it discovers, are laws of nature exhibited by reality and hence verifiable in experience, they are not merely analytical, explicating the given concepts themselves The reconciliation of these two aspects in philosophical theory has been an extremely difficult task in the history of philosophy
According to Jaina epistemology knowledge belongs to the soul but reveals itself as well as an independent reality, which may be material or immaterial By holding knowledge to be the eternal and spontaneous essence of the soul and by holding it to be self-conscious (sva-prakāśa), the Jaina view distinguishes itself from such other realistic theories as of Nyaya-Vaiśesika and Purva-Mimänsä On the other hand, it discards the representationist and idealistic theories of the Buddhist schools It also rejects the Buddhist doctrine of the radical separation of experience from thought (pramāna-vyavastha) and against this holds knowledge to be always of the nature of judgement, Vyavasaya or vikalpa There is no such thing as non-judgemental pure experience which could be condemned as 'confused', 'inadequate', or 'incommunicable' cognition Thus on the Jaina view, knowledge is self-conscious (sva-prakāśaka) and objective (para-pra

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kāśaka), presentative (nırākāra) but judgemental (vyavasāyātmaka)
Realism and Idealism
In defending their realistic position, the Jainas as well as other realistic schools had to contend with the Buddhists Realism is, in a sense, a common sense position In experience we seem to know a real world of objects, not phantoms of our own creation This world of real objects, unlike the world of imaginary objects, has a force and effectiveness which we can feel even to our dismay and which we cannot alter Again, unlike illusion and hallucination, this is a world which is common to different observers at the same time and place as well as at different times and places Unlike the world of dreams it is a world which follows definite laws and its objects have their own constant nature which we neither make nor can alter We can only hope to discover the order of nature as its observant pupils Realism is thus grounded on the fact that knowledge 'finds' objects as already 'given to it so that the character or content of knowledge is determined by the object The commonness of objects to different percipients and the fact that they exhibit a natural order support the realistic position since otherwise we would only be shut in a subjective and chaotic world as of dreams and illusions
While realism arises from stressing certain obvious features of common experience, idealism arises from a consideration of the inevitable difficulties which we encounter in trying to give a coherent philosophical account of the knowledge situation in terms of a realistic hypothesis As Bosanquet has remarked, to appreciate the strength of idealism one must first realize the force of scepticism and the impasse to which naive realism leads 4 The Buddhists were led to an idealistic position gradually by the inexorable force of an uncompromising, dichotomizing logic which remains unimpressed by the naive claims of uncritical experience Buddhist thought began by observing that the objects of experience are all unstable and that a scientific belief in their reality is warranted not by the mere fact of their appearance, but by a comprehension of their rationale or necessity in terms of underlying

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principles or invariances
Any attempt to understand mere being must lead to a distinction between appearance and essence Thus arose the Buddhist concepts of Dharma or phenomenon, Dharmata or invariant order and Dharmalaksana and dharmasvabhāva ie phenomenal manifestation and phenomenal ground 5 The doctrine of the momentariness of all phenomena governed by the ultimate principle of Pratītyasamutpāda or contingent origination became the cardinal principle of Buddhist thought From this it follows that perceptual experience and common sense are ab initio involved in an illusion Except in introspection, we never perceive the constant flux in which all things are constantly appearing and disappearing As Bertrand Russel once remarked in a truly Buddhistic vein, change is the law of nature while identity is a mere construct If we could peep into the inner constitution of things we would discover not substance but process, a ceaseless procession of microevents where only certain invariances of functional relationships may be discovered Thus the hard solid world of common experience is nothing but a natural illusion conjured by our senses Reality then becomes invisible and only indirectly accessible, a rational construct rather than the content of plain perception This should be sufficient to shake our belief in the reality of objects merely on the ground that they are so perceived Indeed, we must reflect over the fact that while they last, illusions, hallucinations and dreams exercise the same convincing force as common experience So suspect is common experience, in fact, that whenever we come across anything unusual or out of the way, we seek confirmation in terms of repeatability and an intelligible law of occurrence It is obvious thus that fugitive or unrepeated experience (anabhyāsadaśāpanna pratyaksa) is but a poor warrant for belief in the reality of its object It needs a further validation
Apart from the psychologically illusive characteristics of perceptual experience and its need of rational validation, there is an insuperable epistemological difficulty in believing the content of perception to be a direct reference to reality The process of perception involving sensory as well as psychic functioning must

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take several moments In fact, the Vibhajyavādıns analysed what is called Vithicitta into a sequence of seventeen moments 6 Now the Sautrāntikas argued that since the momentary object which stimulates the external sense-organ can become the content only of a cognition which arises in a subsequent moment, it follows that the content of knowledge refers to an object which is not real at the moment of knowledge In other words, the object is not the content of knowledge but the content of knowledge is only an effect of the object which it seeks to represent Objectivity, response to stimulation, representation, all these have the same meaning? What is more, since reality consists of unique and momentary particulars while knowledge is judgmental and involves generalization, it is obvious that between pure sensation and knowledge a constructive activity of the mind intervenes On the Buddhist view, thus, knowledge becomes doubly removed from the object--first through representation and further through the constructional element in the representation From this Sautrántika position, it is an easy next step to question the very reality of an independent object The Sautrāntikas had argued that the independence of the objects, even though it is known only indirectly, is proved by inference 8 For knowledge to have regular differentiation within itself would need a cause external to it The Vijñānavādıns argued that the internal differentiation of knowledge may be attributed to Vāsanā The Sautrāntikas had held that Vāsanā is of two kinds, anubhava-vāsanā and anādivāsanā The latter is responsible for the spontaneously constructive nature of knowledge, its persistent and universal categories The former is responsible for the creation of diverse particular forms arising from remembered experiences Now, the Vijñānavādıns attribute all the differentiation within knowledge and all its forms to this infinite and innate power of the mind called vāsanā. They see no reason to postulate any external reality The object which experience reveals is never found except within knowledge This invariable co-presence or salopalamblia of knowledge and its object proves their identity 10 Then again, if we hold the object to be different from its representation in knowledge, then representation ceases to resemble the object, and in

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that case the object would be wholly unknowable and thus there would be no ground for asserting its existence If, on the other hand, the object is excactly like the representation, it must like the representation, be within knowledge because representation is only an instance of knowledge As Bosanquet has remarked, once the object is separated from knowledge, it is impossible to bring the two together and there is no way to escape the closed walls of knowledge or a solipsistic position 11 The Vijñānavādins went further and attacked the very possibility of an independent material reality They sought to accomplish this through a dialectical resolution of the concept of atoms or wholes into contradiction 12 While common sense asserts the reality of obects because they are perceived, the Vijñānavādins assert the unreality of objects because of their appearance (drśyatva) just as in dreams As for the commonness and regularity of the world of experience, the Vijñāpavadins retort that while illusions and hallucinations last, they also appear to be common and regular In fact, beliefs and prejudices can have a content common to many persons without signifying independent reality and the instinctive or transcendental elements of thought can provide regularity to the objects of experience without their being external to knowledge What is more, it is the idea of relating knowledge to an external subject conceived on the analogy of objects, that produces solipsism The true idealistic position avoids solipsism by distinguishing knowledge from arbitrary fancy and by placing the subject as much within knowledge as the object Again, the regularity of the world is more an ideal of knowledge than a patent fact of experience The Madhymikas went a step further and said that since the object and subject do not exist, knowledge itself must become unreal
Such Buddhistic views served as the standing foil which the realistic systems sought to counter Here the Jaina point of view is in conformity with the criticism which Nyāya and Mīmāmsā have levelled against the Buddhistic position 13 However, the Jaina theory of reality being dialectical, it escapes much of that criticism which the Buddhists in their turn levelled against Nyāya

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and Mimāmsā realism
The idealistic position might mean either the denial of the reality of external objects or the denial of their being different from knowledge or the assertion of a generic similarity between the objects and their cognitions The first alternative which denies external reality is plainly contradicted by the universal testimony of experience If it be objected that experience does not differ from illusion and hallucination in producing the sense of external reality and is thus an inadequate reason to establish such reality, the answer is that experience cannot be doubted quâ experience but only where it is contradicted by some other experience or reason The experience of external reality is not an extraordinary or casual experience It is regular and universally repeated Even its counterfeit in illusion or hallucination is required to bear the essential seal which characterizes experience viz , the apparent capacity of revealing an external reality As the content of an abhyāsadaśāpanna Pratyakşa, uncontradicted by any other experience or reason, the reality of external objects must be the content of a true belief In fact the illusoriness of illusions or hallucination is not quâ experience but quâ misrepresentation Illusions and hallucinations will, indeed, become meaningless unless we postulate external reals It is only with reference to such external reality that we judge experience to be true or false
Nor are the positive arguments advanced by the idealist adequate to prove his position Sahopalambha is an unproven reason (asıddha hetu) 14 If it means that any knowledge and any object are necessarily copresent, it is obviously false If it means that a particular object is necessarily found along with a particular cognition, then too it is false because different particular cognitions of the same object are possible in different minds If it means that an object and its cognition are simultaneous, then too it is false because on the Buddhist assumption itself the object must precede the cognition What is more, in memory, prescience etc , the object and its cognition are not simultaneous Not only is salopalambha unproven, it is also a ryablıcārī hetu

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because it is found even in the absence of the Sadhya i e, identity of the object and its cognition When the omniscient Buddha knows the minds of the common mortals, it is obviously not true that the mind of the Buddha and the minds which are its objects are identical In fact, in a more generalised manner, whenever there is a knowledge of different objects taken together, ie, a samūhālambanātmaka jñāna, it is obvious that while the cognition is one, its objects are different If each one of these objects were identical with the sanie cognition they would become identical with one another Then again, sahopalambha is in fact a contrary reason (viruddha hetu) Far from proving the identity of the cognition and its object it only proves their difference, since it is only different things which can be cognized together but distinctly The possibility of an identical entity masquerading in different forms is thus ruled out If knowledge and its object were the same, either the objects will exhibit the characteristics of knowledge and start cognizing each other independently of any knowledge, or cognitions themesleves will be insentient and inert like the objects If it be said that the invariance with which a particular object is apprehended in a particular cognition points to their identity and that if this were not so, any cognition might indifferently relate to any object, then it would have to be answered that cognitions relate only to specific objects as may be available for cognition The different cognitions are made possible by the difference of objects Otherwise all objects would become the same or the difference of cognitions would become arbitrary
The Buddhists in their turn had argued that the falsity of external objects is proved by the fact that while experience shows them as stable identities, they must, in fact, to be real be causally efficient and hence they can only be momentary particulars Because a thing exists, it produces its effect and with that ceases to be The destruction of things does not need any special or additional cause A continuing entity can not function causally either at once or over a period of time, because if it does not perform its functions in the first moment, there is no reason why it should do so at any subsequent moment 16 If it be said that the

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same entity performs different causal functions at different moments, then we must admit that we have different entities at different moments because an object can be identified only in terms of its function The seed in the granary and the seed in the soil must be counted different because the former unlike the latter does not produce any sprout If it be argued that the same substance produces an effect only when it is assisted by other accessory conditions, then we shall have to make intelligible the relationship between the principal and the accessory If the two are different and the accessory makes a real difference to the principal, it is not the principal as such that acts but only the new entity thus brought about by the action of the accessory Thus, a stable entity cannot function either simultaneously or in succession and hence every object must be momentary and unique to be real Now, cognition, whether perceptual or inferential, represents objects as stable and identical It is obvious then that the objects as we know them are not real but only ideal and if we only know ideal objects it would be difficult to affirm the reality of any ever-unknown external reals
In answering this train of reasoning the different schools of realism can no longer maintain their alliance The Nyāya-Vaiseşıka school, for example, tried to argue that we are able to perceive universals also in so far as we perceive the substances and qualities where they inhere They adopted an ultrarealistic stand point and argued for the reality of every element in cognition The Jainas, on the other hand, met this point by their dialectical notion of reality where every entity has infinite aspects, positive as well as negative We must not think of universals and particulars as two separate orders of reality somehow interpenetrating each other and hierarchically arranged Such a concept as upheld by the Naiyāyikas had been criticised threadbare by Dignāga
'अन्यत्र वर्तमानस्य ततोऽन्यस्थान-जन्मनि । तस्मादचलत स्थानाद् वृत्तिरित्यतियुक्तता ।। यत्नासी वर्तते भावस्तेन सबध्यते न तु । तद्देशिन च व्याप्नोति किमप्येतन्महाद्भुतम् ।।

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न याति न च तत्रासीदस्ति पश्चान्न चाशवत् ।
जहाति पूर्व नाधारमहो व्यसनसन्तति ॥"10 For the Jainas similarities and differences between things follow from their very nature Pure universals and pure particulars are mere abstractions, not real The Jainas accepted the argument that the resemblances of things (anugata-pratiti) and the success of action on that assumption (anugata-vyavahāra) prove that objects do have overlapping properties The Buddhist argument that such appearances and actions can be fully explained on the basis of Apoha or the negation which is necessarily involved in determination or designation, 17 cannot be accepted because if determination involves negation, negation equally assumes determination The positive and negative aspects of things, their similarities and differences, cannot be regarded as exclusive things and then sought to be somehow reconciled Thus against the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness, the Jainas counterposed the view that for anything to be real it must possess the three characteristics of origination, destruction and continuance 18 Everything is both substance and modes As substance or di avya an object continues, while its modes change continually That is why, it is able to function differently at different moments 10 In other words, the nature of a thing mcludes a modal series Consequently the Buddhist dichotomy of simultaneous or successive functioning or of identity or difference is misleading In fact, the Jainas replace the Buddhist categories of pure identity and difference by the richer category of identity in difference, or, if one pleases, of difference in identity Between different substances which exhibit similarities, the Jainas postulate horizontal universals or tiryak sāmānya With respect to the identity of different modes, they postulate a vertical universal or ürdhvatā sārnānya These two are at once identical and different from their individual substrata 20
The Buddhists had postulated two utterly and radically different sources of knowledge Experience cognizes the bare momentary particular while understanding produces judgments

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which recapitulate and formulate the data of sensation in accordance with transcendental categories 21 The use of words, concepts and remembered images transforms the indescribable sensation of reality into generalized determinations which do not at all correspond to the nature of things in themselves It follows then that the objects as we know them are not real while the real nature of things remains unavailable in judgmental knowledge The truth of such knowledge does not consist in any direct correspondence with reality but in its pragmatic serviceability which arises from the indirect reference of conceptual knowledge to the data of sensation, a capacity which is really one of excluding what is not relevant The concept of 'water for instance, enables us to exclude all those things which are irrelevant to the quest for what will quench our thurst, etc Every concept dichotomizes the world of possible experience and while it does evoke a positive image, its real function is one of negation or exclusion 22 Scientific knowledge, on this view, is a necessarily abstract determination (vyāyrtyātmiaka) which has an indirect application to reality but does not in any way represent it or directly correspond to it Scientific laws do not picture realities, they have an operational and pragmatic relevance (vyayahārāvisamvāda)
The Jainas like the Naiyāyikas reject this doctrine of Pramānavyavasth, and accept that of Pramāna-samplava Experience and reason do not refer to two different worlds, real and ideal Bare sensation does not constitute experience, for which it is necessary that sensation should be accompanied with mental apperception Perceptual knowledge is not radically different from rational judgment since it already contains a judgment, however implicit it might be
Experience is of two kinds, pragmatic or Sâmvyavahārıka and ultimately real or Pāramārthika Sāmvyavahārika Pratyakşa is relevant to successful natural activity and social communication 23 Since it presupposes sensory and mental functioning it is in effect a kind of indirect knowledge Accordingly when the role of sensation is more important than that of thought, it is

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called sensuous perception If this experience arises from the mind alone, it may be called a psychic experience Both of these are included in Matijñāna For such perceptual cognition to be possible we must postulate the capacity of the soul to perceive 24
The senses themselves do not perceive, they are only like windows through which the soul perceives, and this perception is not of an undifferentiated, indescribable particular It is a case of differentiated cognition 25 It is always determinate, revealing itself as well as the object In fact, alongside the material or paudgalika indi iya, bhāvendriya or psychuc sense has to be postulated Bhāvendi ya consists of labdhı or capacity and upayoga or apprehension 28 What is more, all this mediation between knowledge and the object is not necessarily required as an aid to knowledge to reveal the object Knowledge is spontaneously capable of revealing all the objects as is the case with Kevalajñāna where the soul in its state of purity simultaneously knows everything In ordinary life the spontaneity of the soul or knowledge is obscured by the working of karma That which is described as the functioning of the physical senses and their contact with objects is thus not an aid to knowledge but really part of an obscuring apparatus Such sensory functioning becomes an occasion for the manifestation of knowledge when there is a temporary and partial cessation and subsidence of the obscuring karma Even with open eyes a man may fail to see Even with closed eyes one may see quite clearly as in clairvoyance There is no question of the senses somehow reproducing the form of the object and communicating it to the mind to judge The mind knows and judges at the same time and the senses function by occasionally ceasing to hinder the perceptual power of the soul
Experience or pratyaksa is defined by its character of vividness or varśadya which is explained as consisting in the fact that pratyaksa is not mediated by any other kind of cognition The result is that in it the object is cognized as an immediately given particular, as 'this' It is knowledge by acquaintance, not knowledge by signs, representations or description 27 As already

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mentioned the fullness or perfection of experience is attained in Kevala-jñāna which is really direct experience It is the manifestation of the very nature of the sentient subject when all its obscurations disappear The possibility of such direct synoptic knowledge or omniscience was questioned by the sceptics especially the Mimāmsakas It had been argued by the Jainas as by Patañjali in the Yogasūtias that omniscience is proved by the fact that we observe a gradation in the degree of knowledge Some know more than others and there can be no upper limit to knowledge except in omniscience The soul has the capacity to know anything and if all its obscuring factors were to disappear, it would reach omniscience From the notion of perfection and the possibility of its realization it is concluded that such realization cannot be denied 28 That man can free himself from ignorance, passion and the bondage of Kai man was accepted by the Buddbists as the natural corollary of the belief in perfect purification coupled with the belief in the innate luminosity of knowledge At lower degrees of purification we get lower degrees of supernormal knowledge Thus we have the Avadhuñana or clairvoyance and Manahparyāyajñāna or telepathy These two alongwith Kevalajñāna constitute the real or transcendental Pratyaksa
It would thus be clear that experience in Jainism is not the product of a chance encounter between physical organisms and external objects, not a causal response of the senses to stimulations from outside It is the direct apprehension of reality by the soul where at the level of impure bodily existence, psychic capacities and physical senses cooperate to allow the soul to function in accordance with the temporary destruction and subsidence of some obscuring Karman Such perception or Matijñāna has been divided into four stages-avagraha, thā, avāya and dhāraņā 29 Avagı alia is the apprehension of the object in a general manner Thā is the seeking of the mind to know the object more fully Doubt, enquiry and comparison of the data have their place in this stage which has sometimes been translated as 'speculation' One might compare it with the Santirana of the Ceylonese Buddhist school of Theravada The next stage of Avāya sees the emergence

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pana
of a completed perceptual determination which indentifies the object definitely This is obviously like Votthapana or VyavasthāThis is followed by retention or Dharaṇā These stages of perception form a series where the preceding stage leads to the more determinate succeeding stages One might recall that the Naiyayikas propose a somewhat similar series which begins with Sannikarṣa and goes on through Nu vikalpa and Savikalpa Pratyaksa to Hānopādānādi Buddhi The Jainas deprecate the role of Sannikarsa except that the doctrine of Dravyavagraha in the case of senses other than the eye and the mind and leading to Arthāvagraha is similar to Sannikai sa leading to Nirvikalpaka Pratyaksa The Jainas, of course, do not admit that the object of perception and its forms (Višesya and Višeșana) are perceived in an unrelated manner They admit an implicit judgment even here in which the object is very generally known These two aspects of Avagraha could be compared to Āvajjana and Sampațicchana of Buddhists Avaya corresponds to Savikalpaka Pratyaksa while the Hānādi Buddhi is admitted by the Jainas also as Pramanaphala, though Ajñāna-nivrttı has also been described as Pramana-phala 30
The Nyaya-sutras had defined Perception as "Indriyārthasannikarsotpannam jñānam avyapadesyam avyabhcāri vyavasāyātmakam pratyaksam❞ When Dharmakirti amended Dignaga's definition of Pratyaksa by defining it as 'Kalpanapodham abhrāntam', he appears to have staged a return to 'avyapadesyam avyablican' of the Nyāyasūtras The Buddhist position, of course, remained distinct by its denial of the determinateness or Vyavasāyātmakatva of perception The Jainas criticized the Nyāya doctrine of Sannikarsa and agreed with the Buddhists that Piamāņa is Jñana, not an insentient instrument or Karana They, however, agreed with the Naiyayikas in regarding Pratyaksa as judgmental or vyavasayātmaka and condemned the Buddhists on this point
31
The Jaina view of perception makes it, not a passive experience, but a process of active observation which grows from a mere

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apprehension of the existence of objects to enquiry and determination (ihā and avāya) The resultant empirical knowledge although distinct from is yet continuous with rational knowledge as a sequence of Pramāna and Praināna-phala 32 The retention of past observation leads to remembrance or Smrti, which is a type of valid cognition although it is indirect rather than experiential The Buddhists had regarded memory as fundamentally distinct from knowledge on the ground that while knowledge discovers its object, memory merely revives a past experience What is more, memory also includes falsification since it mixes up different experiences of similar things and produces a vague image which is a compounded and synthetic one The Jainas, however, argue that the knowledge of an object already known does not on that account cease to be knowledge Further, if we reject memory as a source of knowledge on the ground that it evokes a generalized image, we must then give up the hope of having any valid descriptive knowledge which is bound to be synthetic It is experience as aided by recollection that produces Pratyabhijñānu or synthetic judgment (sankalanātmakam) 33 Judgements of identity, similarity, dissimilarity or relation are included in this kind of knowledge It would be seen here that the Jaina theory of judgement does not compendiously analyse all judgments into just one mould of an attribute predicated of a subject Thus 'x' is greater than 'y' is a distinct variety of Pratyabhijñāna, depending on the relationship between two entities (tat pratiyogi-jñāna) other than that of similarity or difference This is similar to what is called 'apeksā buddhi' just as the judgments based on 'sādharmya' are similar to Upamāna The Jainas, however, reject Upamāna as a distinct Pramāna because in that case another Pramāna will have to be invented for judgments based on Vaidharmya Pratyablujñāna is neither a mere conjunction of recollective and perceptual cognition, nor is it the perception of an object as qualified by its predicate By comparing perceived and recollected objects it goes beyond each of them and judges their mutual relations which are neither perceived nor recollected but apperceived in a distinctive kind of judgment

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ing
Pratyabhuñana or synthetic judgment is the basis of Tha or generalization Uha is sometimes interpreted as Inductive ReasonThis seems to narrow down the meaning of Uha unnecessarily 34 It is true that Üha has been defined as the knowledge of Vyaptı arising from Upalambha and Anupalambha, but Upalambha does not mean simply empirical observation It stands for cognition generally and can relate to inferential objects also Üha or generalization is essentially of the nature of reasoning or Tarka 35 What it establishes is a necessary relationship between universals or classes All scientific laws are of this kind They are expressed in term of universal judgements which assert that if anything is an instance of one class or has a certain property then it also must be an instance of another class necessarily connected with the former and have the related property Such a universal concomitance or Vyaptı is typically exhibited by relationship of class-inclusion or causal connection From the point of view of reaching such a knowledge of implication or inclusion the faculty of reasoning capable of perceiving abstract truths or necessary connections between universals is relevant Whether the generalization is purely logical or empirical, analytical or synthetic, is not relevant here That is why Uha or tarka should be interpreted not as inductive reasoning but simply as reasoning
"All men are mortal", "gold is a metal", "whereever there is smoke there is fire", these are all different kinds of instances of Vyaptı which may thus be conceived as an "If, then" relationship If x is F, x is G Here F is the Vyapya while G is the Vyapaka The vyapya implies the vyāpaka The assertion of vyāpti is tantamount to asserting that the conjunction of the affirmation of the vyāpya with the negation of the vyapaka is false If the vyāpya is asserted of something it would be valid to assert of it the vyapaka also Vyaptı may apparently be of two kinds may be perceived as a relationship between two properties by observing the relationship between their different loci We might discover the relationship of smoke and fire by observing the various places where smoke and fire occur in conjunction and where smoke fails to occur without fire Such a vyāpti is called Bahu-vyāptı
It

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or external vyāpti This is obviously a kind of inductive generalization based on the joint methods of agreement and difference and requires the availability of examples and counter-examples The Jainas, however, emphasize that this is not necessary to vyaptı which can be purely Antarvyāpti ie, the vyaptı relationship between the vyapya and the vyāpaka may be directly reasoned in terms of what the vyāpya and vyāpaka themeslves are without the need of examining their occurrences in different loci As soon as it is reasoned out that the vyāpya would not be possible without the vyāpaka, the relation of vyapti is realised It may be mentioned that the distinction of Antarvyāpti and Bahirvyaptı on the basis that the former is realized within the given instance while the latter is realized in other instances, is an irrelevant distinction because the essence of vyapti is the necessary relationship between the vyāpya and the vyāpaka, not the instantiation of their concurrence in other locI 36
The Naiyayikas argued that vyāpti is realized through the observation of concurrence or sahacarya of the vyapya and the the vyapaka and of the non-occurrence of the vyapya wherever the vyapaka does not occur Thus Sahacāradarsana conjointly with Avyabhicara-darśana leads to vyaptıgraha The extension of this observed relationship to all similar instances is to be explained through what is termed as 'sāmānya-laksanā-pratyāsattı' While observing particulars we are also able to observe their general features and relations Thus generalization does not involve any independent faculty of conception or reason It is merely the result of observing generalities within particular instances brought to light by their comparison and contrast The Jainas do not accept this because observation alone cannot give any necessary or universal knowledge The objection of the Carvākas or Hume against the possibility of deriving necessary relations from empirical observations are essentially valid Such knowledge must be attributed to a distinct faculty of reasoning which is not incommensurate with observation Reason is distinct from experience but supplements it and extends the boundary of knowledge gained from observation There is, again, no reason

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to believe that merely observing particulars reveals generalities which are in fact grasped through a process of reasoning about the particulars The Naiyāyikas in their turn accept reasoning or tarka as the process of a hypothetical reductio ad absurdum and consider it to be an aid to the confirmation of vyāptı but not in itself an independent means of acquiring knowledge The Jaina answer is that Tai ka establishes as well as reveals a truth and hence must be counted as a valid and distinct source of knowledge In fact, but for Tarka and the iesultant vyāpti-jñāna, inference or Anumiāna would not be possible at all It would, of course, not do to derive vyāpti itself from Anumāna because that would be a petitio principii or a vicious infinite regress And since observation alone does not give vyāptı, it is obvious that Tarka or reasoning is an independent and indespensable source of knowledge involving generalization and necessity The Jaina view deriving the knowledge of vyāptı from reasoning based on observation and non-observation (upalambhānupalambhanımıtta) is reminiscent of the Buddhist view which derived vyāptı from upalanibhānupalambha-pañcaka ie, from twofold observations in conjunction with a threefold non-observation, the two observations being of vyāpya and vyāpaka together while the threefold nonobservation refers to the non-observation of the vyāpya by itself and of vyāpya when the vyāpaka cannot be observed
'भूमाधीर्वह्नि विज्ञान धूमज्ञानमधीस्तयो ।
97747179778TPffer Tafe racer 11937 The Jainas differ in so far as they do not consider Pratyaksa and Anupalamblia to be sufficient to explain the comprehension of vyāpti Nor can vyāptı result from the judgement immediately following perception (Pratyaksa-Prşthabhāvı vikalpa) since such a judgment cannot go beyond what is given in perception itself Since perception is limited to the particular the judgement which immediately recapitulates it cannot possibly give the knowledge of universal connection
The knowledge of Vyāptı forms the ground of inference and hence no topic has been so extensively and intensively discussed un the different schools of Indian logic as that of vyāptı In the

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earliest phase of the Nyāya school inference was held to be threefold-as Pūrvavat, Sesavat and Sāmānyato-drsța The exact signification of these is not certain but it appears that at this stage the basis of inference was the similarity or dissimilarity of the given instance to similar or dissimilar cases The drstānta or paradigmatic case was later held to be an exemplification of a general law or Vyāpti which itself was believed to be derived from an inductive generalization Drstānta, Upanaya and Nigamana thus constituted a deduction based on an earlier induction It is the Buddhist logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti who despite the original empiricism of Buddhism developed a strongly rationalist theory of vyāptı On this view vyāpti is essentially an invariance (avyabhucāritatva) or inseparability (ayınābhāva) of the hetu from the sādhya This becomes the basis of inference if the hetu possesses the three characteristics or Laksanas of belonging to the Paksa, pervading some Sapaksa and being excluded from the Vipaksa “Pakse sattvameva, sapakse eva sattvam, asapakse ca asattyameva", these three formulae sum up the three aspects or Trairūpya of the Hetu Of these, Sapaksasattva and Asapakşāsattva constitute the notion of Vyāptı in its two aspects of Anvaya and Vyatıreka The Buddhists went furtber and tried to define the conditions under which such a relationship of Vyāpti would be possible if the hetu is different from the sādhya, the hetu can be inseparable from the sādhya only by being causally dependent on it If on the other hand, the hetu is not the effect of the sādhya, their necessary relationship must be based on their essential identity, i e, the hetu must be included within the sādhya In this case the hetu and the sādhya are conceptually distinct but the extension of the hetu is within the extension of the Sādhya “Vahnımān dhūnāt" illustrates the former while “Viksah simsapātrāt" illustrates the latter 38
While the Naiyáyıkas accepted the notion of avyablicăritatva as necessary for Vyāptı, they went further to add to it the notion of sāhacai ya as also essential This they felt necessary in view of the Keralānvayi inference The Naiyāyikas, again, accepted the Buddhist Trairūpya as necessary but not sufficient for the

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definition of a good reason They added two more aspects to it abādhita-visayatva or being uncontradicted and asatpratipaksatva or not being counterbalanced by an equally good reason on the contrary The Naiyāyikas, however, rejected the Buddhist notion of causality and essential identity as the only two grounds of Vyāptı The actual relations on which the vyāptı may rest can be diverse For example, in “Rūpavān i asāt", the hetu is not the effect of the Sadhya nor is there any identity or tādātnya between them
The Jainas rejected the three characteristics of the hetu proposed by the Buddhists as well as the five characteristics proposed by the Naiyáyikas Instead the Jaina logicians proposed that the hetu may be defined by a single characteristic which would be both necessary and sufficient This one characteristic of the hetu is its untenability in the absence of the sādhya (anyathānupapannatya or avinābhāva) 39 If this characteristic be absent, the presence of all the three characteristics mentioned by the Buddhists would still not suffice for a valid inference For example, in the inference "He is dark since he is the son of Maitri as are the other sons of Maitri", the three conditions are satisfied because the hetu Maitritanayatva is found in the Pakșa as also in the sapaksaikadeśa constituted by the other sons of Maitri while it is absent from the asapaksa constituted by all those who are not dark It may be noted that the consideration of such cases led to the Naiyãyıka definition of Vyaptı as anaupādluka or non-accidental relationship The Jaina logicians have thus put their finger on the heart of the matter if the humanity of any one is a sufficient ground for asserting his mortality, it is solely and wholly because no one can be human without being mortal The assertion of humanity is incompatible with the denial of mortality In the well known Buddhist argument which seeks to establish the impermanence of all things on the ground of their existence, it is obvious that there is no sapaksa, since all things are included in the paksa Thus it is the realization of a necessary contradiction between the assertion of the hetu and the denial of the sādhya which is the essence of logical deduction Particularly interesting is the Jaina

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refutation of the need for Paksadharmatva In such instances as ‘udeșyatı šakațam Kịttıkodayāt' or 'Asti nabhascandro jalacandrāt', there is no Paksadharmatva 40 There is only a direct connection between the Hetu and sādhya What it really means is that all inference does not need to be syllogistic involving three terms and propositions so that the middle term' mediates between the the other two Where we predict a regularly subsequent event from a preceding one or reach the notion of something from that of its counterpart, we do not need to take into account the locus of the hetu or the subject of which it may be predicated It is, of course, a different matter that the knowledge of the belonging of the hetu to a subject or locus may in fact be implied in the apprehension of the Vyāptı Seeing the reflection of the moon in the water we infer the moon in the sky Here the reflection is connected with the moon which is in turn connected with the sky The apprehension of the vyāptı leads to the apprehension of the locus of the sādhya but the hetu is not directly connected with that locus
Like the Naiyāyikas the Jaina logicians also rejected the Buddhist attempt to limit the determining relations of Vyāpti to just two viz, causality and identity But unlike the Naiyāyikas the Jainas themselves sought to give a different but systematic account of these relations These relations have been specified as fivefold 41 The hetu may be an 'innate characteristic' or svabhāva as for example, in "Anityah sabdah ki takatvāt" This is similar to the svabhāvānumāna of the Buddhists The hetu may, again, be the cause or the effect of the sādhiya The former case is illustrated by the inference of rain from clouds, the latter by the inference of fire from smoke While the latter case is the same as the Kāryānumāna of the Buddhists, the Jain logicians have expressed surprise over the failure of the Buddhists to consider the cause itself as an adequate reason for inferring the effect All practical life, and one may add, science depends on such reasoning The Buddhists were apparently deterred in this by the idea that it is not safe to predict an effect from a cause in the real world be

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cause the operation of the cause might be hindered by unforeseeable circumstances It is, however, not true that the Buddhists entirely rule out the inference of the effect from the cause but they do not make it a general case since they distinguish between the abstract necessity of a scientific law and the contingent nature of actual prediction Since the actual state of the world is never fully known, we cannot infallibly predict consequences simply from an abstract knowledge of causal laws The Jainas, however, argue that since there is a one-to-one correspondence between the cause and the effect, the inference of the effect from the cause and the inference of the cause from the effect are exactly at par
Apart from identity and causality, inference may be based on the co-inherence or collocation of the the hetu and the sādhya as for example in the inference that the fruit has colour because it has taste These four conditions exhaust the grounds of inference of a positive character Where the inference results in a negative judgement, the ground has to be the opposition of the hetu to the sādhya
So far the Jaina conception of knowledge is only a variation within the general philosophic culture of India which developed during several centuries of acute debate especially between the Buddhists, the Naiyāyikas and the Jainas The Jaina position might be briefly summarized as that of holding reason and experience to be distinct but cooperating sources of knowledge where experience gives a direct knowledge by acquaintance of the material world as isolated facts while reason gives an indirect knowledge of reality at the level of general laws, universal connections or invariances Experience already presupposes an apperceptive activity and implicit judgment while reasoning synthesizes and analyzes the data of experience and discovers its underlying conceptual forms Both reason and experience exbibit the essential characteristics of knowledge in so far as it reveals and determines the nature of reality and constitutes ultimately a spontaneous intuitive activity of the soul That knowledge in

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common life is a laborious process in which it grows gradually in time by gathering and connecting isolated facts and testing and correcting itself is due to the fact that the intuitive power of the soul is freed from obscuring factors only through the gradual and occasional subsidence of Karman It has to be remembered that while the truth of knowledge depends on its correspondence with reality i e, 'utpattau paratah prāmānyam', the assurance of truth or verification is both in terms of its innate character as well as confirmation received from other knowledge 42 Where experience is repeatable or where knolwedge arises from rational deduction, knowledge appears as self-validating while in the case of new observations or doubt in reasoning, knowledge requires to be further validated by repeated observation or reasoning by way of a reductio ad absurdum
What enabled the Jaina philosophers to pick their way through the maze of rival views without prejudice was their own distinctive philosophical ethos in terms of a dialectical outlook on both knowledge and reality This profound and essential direction of Jaina thought is also its most ancient and original element The Buddhists and, following them in later times, the Advaita Vedāntists had formulated a negative dialectic which discovers contradictions in conceptual knowledge and hence regards its truth as merely pragmatic Reality becomes on this view essentially unknowable and indescribable As has been observed“Catuskoti-vinırmuktam tattvam Madhyamikā jaguh" Jaina dialectic on the other hand is positive rather than negative It discovers contradiction to be due to the adoption of partial and dogmatic points of view and reconciles them with the logic of Syādvāda It discovers the infinite richness of reality, 'ananta-dharmātmakam vastu' and allows an infinite progression of knowledge where common sense as well as conceptual rigour cooperate rather than behave as mutual enemies 43
Jaina Syādvāda was criticized by other schools as defying the law of contradiction 'Sankarācārya thus objects against the Jaina that if one asserts existence one cannot assert its contra

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dictory non-existence, and if reality is indefinable one must keep silent 44 This criticism arises from the fact that it neglects the doctrine of Naya or partial point of view 45 We may look at things from the dravyārthika Naya or Paryāyārthika Naya Dravyārthika Naya attends principally to the substantial identity of the thing while Paryāyār thika Naya attends to its modal variations The former is, again, subdivided into three viz, Naigama, Sangraha and Vyavahāra, while the latter is subdivided into four varieties viz, Rjusūtra, Šabda, Samabhırüdha and Evambhūta The Naigama Naya relates substances or modes or both as principal and secondary in synthetic judgments Although it stresses both substance and mode it is still not a Pramāna because it lays unequal stress on the two, exaggerating one side or the other Sangraha Naya expresses the universal or common aspect alone and overlooks the particularities of things Vyavahāra Naya subdivides the conceptual classes given by Sangraha Rjusūtra focuses on the momentary particular. Sabda Naya differentiates verbal forms but notices their essential synonymy while Samabhırūdha Naya differentiates the nuances of meaning or connotations in words with the same denotation Evambhūta Naya relates etymological meanings to operations and takes them to refer to things in actual operation It explains all categories of words as having a fundamentally operational significance
Of these Nayas the first four are points of view relating to reality while the last three are points of view relating to the formulation or expression of reality The Nyāya-Vaišesika illustrates a misconstrued Naigama ie, Naigamābhāsa The Advaitins illustrate Sangrahābhāsa, the Buddhists Rjusūtrābhāsa while the Cārvākas illustrate Vyavahārābhāsa The doctrine of Nayas thus seeks to grade the different metaphysical points of view as of limited validity arising from onesided emphasis The doctrine of Syādvāda seeks to express the manysidedness of reality The truth or falsity of affirmations is here seen to be dependent on the context. Every affirmation or negation acquires meaning by an implicit negation or affirmation of the contrary What is real as x, is not real as not-x, and if we seek to combine the two charac

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teristics simultaneously, reality becomes inexpressible and yet it could be further denied or affirmed in some way
Syādvāda rests on the assumption that no predicate ever exhausts the nature of a real subject Reality has infinite aspects and can be known fully only in a simultaneous omniscience That not being possible for ordinary mortals the best they can do is to seek to build ever richer descriptions of reality by being aware of its infinity and of the limitations of particular points of view One must 'cast a cold eye' on life, on death It is as true for the artist as for the scientist and the philosopher
REFERENCES
1 Tattvarthavartika, Vol I, pp_3ff 2 Parthsāmukha, 11 स्वापूर्वार्थव्यवसायात्मक ज्ञान प्रमाणम् । _Pramāna Minānsā, 1 2 सम्यगर्थनिर्णय प्रमाणम् । 3 Cf Prabhacandra's Prameya Kamala Mārtanda, pp 7-37 4 Bosanquet, Introduction to Logic 5 Cf Rosenberg, Die Probleme der buddhistischen Philosophie 6 See Abhidhammattha-Sangalo 7 Cf Pramānavārtika, भिन्नकाल कथ ग्राह्यमिति चेद् ग्राह्यता विद हेतुत्वमेव युक्तिज्ञा ज्ञानाकारार्पणक्षमम् ।। कार्य ह्यनेकहेतुत्वेऽप्यनुकुर्वदुदेति यत् । तत्तेनाप्यन्न तद्प गृहीतमिति चोच्यते ॥
(3 247 48) 8 Cf Sarvadarśana-sangraha,
ये यस्मिन् सत्यपि कादाचित्का ते सर्वे तदतिरिक्तसापेक्षा यथा अविवक्षति अजिगमिति मयि वचन गमन-प्रतिमासा. विवक्षुजिगमिपु-पुरुषान्तर-सन्तान-सापेक्षा । तथा च विवादाध्यासिता: प्रवृत्तिप्रत्यया सत्यप्यालयविज्ञाने कदाचिदेव नीलाद्युल्लेखिन इति । 9 Sce Vasubandhu, Vijñaptımātratāsıddh Vimśiku, w 1-10

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10 Cf Tattvasangraha, Vol II, pp 691-92
सहोपलम्भानियमादभेदो नीलतद्धियो । भेदश्च भ्रान्तिविज्ञान दृश्यतेन्दाविवाद्धये ।।
(Pramānayınıścaya) 11 Vasubandhu, op cut 12 Vasubandhu, op eit, w 11-15 13 See Yaśovijaya's Jaina nyāya khaanda khadyam, vy 36-38, Prabhacandra,
op cit , pp 77-94
Nyāya Kumudacandra, Vol I, pp 117-37 14 सहोपलम्भनियमान्नाभदो नीलतद्धियो ।
विरु द्वासिद्धसन्दिग्धव्यतिरेकान्वयत्वत ॥ ___ (Akalanka's Nyaya Vimscaya, 183 15 Cr Tattvasangraha, Vol I, Pp 166-207 16 See Randle, Fragments from Dignāga
Cf Pramanavārtika, 1 53 17 See my Apohasiddhi Cf Nyāya Kumuda candra, Vol I, pp 283ff, Nyaya
Vimscaya, 1 118, 145, 153,2 197 18 उत्पादव्ययघ्रौव्ययुक्त सत्
(Tattvārtha Vārtika, 5 30) 19 अर्थ क्रिया न युज्येत नित्यक्षणिकपक्षयो ।
क्रमाक्रमाभ्या भावाना सालक्षणतया मता ॥
(Akalanka, Pramana Sangraha, 28) 20 Cf Pramāna-naya-tattvālokālankāra, 51-8 21 eg, Nyāyabindu 22 Tattvasangraha, Vol I, pp_338ff 23 Jaina Tar kabhāsā, p 2 24 Tattvārtha vārtika, Vol I, pp 57ff 25 Cf Pariksānukha, 2 6-9 26 Cf Akalanka's Pramānapravesa, 15 27 Pariksāmukha, 2 3-4, Pramāna Mimānsā, 1 14 28 'तत्र निरतिशय सार्वज्यबीजम् ।' (Yogasutras)
Cf Pramāna Mimāmsā, 1 16-17 प्रज्ञातिशयविश्रान्त्यादिसिद्धेस्तसिद्धि । बाधकाभावाच्च ।।

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29 Tattvartha Vartika, Vol I, pp 60f Pramana-nayatattvalokalankara, 2 6-10 30 Pramana-nayatattvalokalankara, 6 1-7 31 Cf Pramana-Mimamsa, pp 26-28 32 Cf Pramana nayatativalokalankara, 2 13-17 33 Cf Prameya-Kamala-Martanda, pp 338ff 34 As Satkari Mukerji in his translation of Pramana Mimamsa 35 Nyaya Kumudacandra, Vol II, p 422-32 36 Cf Pramana nayatattvalokalankara, 3 37-38 37 C Nyaya Kumudacandra, Vol I, p 12, Jaina Tarkablasa p 11 38 Nyayabindu 39 Nyayaviniscaya, 2 327, Pariksamukha, 3 16 Cf अन्यथानुपपन्नत्व यत्र तत्र त्रयेण किम् / नान्यथानुपपन्नत्व यत्र तत्र त्रयेण किम् / / Cf Pramana Mimamsa, p 45 40 Cf Pramana Mimamsa, p 61, Jaina Tarkablasa, p 12, Prameya Kamal Martanda, pp 354-56 41 Pramana Mimamsa, p 46, CF Prameya Kamala Martanda, p 379 42 Cf Pramana Nayatattvalokalankara, 1 18-20 43 Pramana Nayatattvalokalankara, 4 14-47 Nyaya Kumudacandra, Vol II, pp 686ff, Tattvarthavartika, Vol I, pp 32-38 44 Sariraka bhasya 45 Sce Pramana Nayatativalokalankara, 7th chapter