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A Side-view of Syād vada
P.B. AL HIKARI
The name syadvada is, as is well-know, applied in a general way to indicate the Jaina position in philosophy. The term is by itself it bit enigmatic, the meaning of which is, for this reason, misunderstood, and so the system to which it is applied has been open to much adverse criticism. The word does not mean to give by itself any information regarding the metaphysical view of the school. It was introduced simply to emphasise some general aspect of their epistemological position. The term. when rightly understood, will appear, however. 10 stand for a philosophic truth of high importance, emphasising, as it does, the natural limitations of human knowledge and speech. The wonder is that an expression of such high significance and truth should have been subiected to unjustifiable criticism at the hands, not of ordinary writers, but of thinkers of very great learning and penetration like even our Acharya Shankara himself. It is not my purpose here to show in detail how this doctrine was worked out and enlarged. possibly by later writers, into those of Saptabhangi and Nayas. I shall confine myself simply to the general aspect of the position a id its implications.
Jinendra Mahavira is supposed to be the first teacher o the doctrine of syadvada, though it is questioned whether he wa the originator to it. Suri Haribhadra, for instance, calls him sir iply "FAIGSE-I9107:"' (Syād-vāda-desśkah)—the teacher of syadvada. As a matter of fact, it may be questioned, and rightly questioned, whether a truth nceds any originator, though it may require at times an expounder. Our revered Vardhaman is, at least, the first exponent of the doctrine in the present cycle of the Universe under the view of Jaina Cosmology. The promulgation of a doctrine like this one, at a period
