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The Anekantavada of the Jainas*
H.M. BHATTACHARYA
Anekāntaväda or the Doctrine of Many-sidedness of Reality of the Jainas is a distinctive contribution to Indian thought in so far as Realistic Metaphysics and Epistemology are concerned. The Jainas are direct realists and they depend for knowledge of the objective world on commonsense and experience. They believe that the universe is divided into two hemispheres as it were, one, the world of jivas and the other, the world of ajivas, or more generally speaking, the world of souls and the world of non-souls. The constitution of the soul is such that it must know the world or non-soul and the constitution of the non-soul is such that it must be known by the soul. The two worlds are self-existent and independent of one another but at the same time they must have, by their very constitution, inter-communication, making knowledge of the outside world on the one hand and bondage and release of the soul on the other possible. As realists the Jainas, like other realists, are pledged to this distinctness of soul and non-soul. Here, as elsewhere, they are guided by commonsense and experience which reveal unmistakably this dualism between the soul and the non-soul.
With this commonsense and realistic attitude the Jainas attempt to interpret the problems of knowledge and of the objective world ; and such attempt of theirs has given rise to the famous Anekāntavāda. The Jainas have come to the doctrine that the object of our knowledge has inexhaustible facets or aspects and any attempt to understand and interpret it from any one particular point of view is an epistemological blunder. They have come to this conclusion by a
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Indo-Asian Culture, January 1958
