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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
is alone the absolute or sole truth (not the empirical knowledge, or aparā vidya, which is ultimately false). Thus while the former view affirms that the two kinds of knowledge are valid "in exactly the same sense", the latter one assigns them to two different spheres', between one being ultimately true and the other false.
This difference between the two views is indeed of a basic and far-reaching philosophical significance. It is, therefore, no wonder that it evokes from Sankara a sharp criticism against the dvaitadvaita thesis of Bhartṛprapañca. The criticism is that "although rules of action may admit of exceptions or alternatives, a truth does not; truth does not depend on any one's choice. Two contradictory attributes, dvaita and advaita, dual and single, cannot both be true of the same thing. Yet the sea and its waves are said to be identical-indifference. In fact the union of contradictories is not denied of phenomenal objects, it is denied only of the noumenon, the 'simple' eternal object (nitya-niravayavavastu-viṣayam hi viruddhatvam avocama dvaitadvaitasya na karya-viṣaye săvayave)."*
The above criticism by Sankara has, if anything, some abstract logical force derived from the unitary basis of his philosophy, but not any concrete ontological conformity. The relationless unitary ultimate has no appeal either to Bhartṛprapañca or, as will be evident from the following sections,
1.
2.
3.
Ibid.
Cf. BOV, p. 78.
K. C. Bhattacharya, op. cit., p. 25.
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