Jaina Theories of Reality and Knowledge

SR No.: 001608
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Y J Padmarajiah
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal
Publication Year: 1963
Total Pages: 444
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Epistemology, & Anekantvad
File Size: 23 MB

Page 162

CHAPTER V
mutual opposition', e. g., between 'blue' and 'non-blue, (nilänilavat), 'hot' and 'cold' (sitoṣṇavat) or 'light' and
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total negation') and anyonyābhäva (mutual negation) respectively. Describing the distinction between the two, Cowell observes: Where the negation is prominent it is called prasajyapratisedha; but where it is not prominent, we have the paryudāsa negation (SDSC, p. 250, f.n. 1). But these seem to be more in the nature of literary conventions, than of ontological principles of contradiction and contrareity, which have a more adequate and precise philosophical significance. The editor of AJP quotes two verses from the Sahityadarpana describing the two conceptions. See Vol. II, (notes), p. 276.
The Jaina conception of opposition seems to be largely akin to the latter kind, at any rate insofar as it asserts that identity, or being, necessarily implies its corresponding correlative of difference or non-being. This approach is countenanced by the fact that the Jaina does not subscribe to the hyperlogical or more conceptualistic approach of a Śrīharsa or Nagarjuna, whose hyperlogicism lands them in an absolute of the bare sat (absolute affirmation), or an equally brave void (absolute negation). The extremes of a Sriharşa or a Nagarjuna, the results of a logically subtie sophistication, seem to indicate the fact that truth lies between such extremes. The modest approach of the Jaina conforms to the rule that the laws of logic should closely follow the course of nature. In other words, experience should, according to him, determine logic but not the other way about. This partiality for the factual side of things makes the Jaina suspicious of all transcendental dialectics which drive a wedge between the parävidya and aparāvidyā or samvṛtisatya and paramarthasatya. In fact his dogged adherence to the facts of nature has earned for him, in his approach to the problem of reality, the reputation of being too empirical, like the Pragmatists in the West. Although the note of cynicism attaching to this reputation dubs the Jaina a slow-crawling earthworm rather than a high-soaring transcendent bird, the story of the scientific temper of all ages seems to confirm the fact that excessive preoccupation with the clouds seems to yield more poetry and grander mysticism, which are more often than not less true to the crude facts in the life of nature.
1. parasparapariharasthitilakṣano'yam virodha iti / AJP, com., p. 11.