Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 117

84
Pravacanasāra
ing to Jaina literature, Mahāvīra is uniformly mentioned as Samane bhagavam Mahāvīre by the Jaina texts; Pravacanasāra throughout uses the word śramaņa for a monk, and this sense is quite usual in the Svetāmbara canon; and in South Indian vernaculars like Kannada Sramaņa or Sravana necessarily means a Jaina.1 The presence of the word 'recluse' in the context therefore, does not allow the conclusion of the non-Jaina origin. The Buddhist passage indicates that it is a perverted view of the Jaina doctrine; something similar to it might have been upheld by Brāhmaṇa ascetics as well. Brahmajālasutta mentions a view called Antānantikā, which at least in its name appears to be very near Anekānta, and against that the Buddhists propounded the fourfold process or method of exposition (catuskoţikah: hoti, na hoti, ca na hoti ca, n'eva hoti na na hoti).2 Even in Jaina texts we do find this fourfold method of exposition in different contexts; for instance, a statement can be true, false, both true and false, or neither true nor false.3 All these parallels merely point out to a method of exposition which must have been current in Magadha perhaps even before Mahāvīra and Buddha. Some scholars hold that Syādvāda comes out as a compromise between certain contradictory utterances of Upanişads that Being alone was true, that non-being alone was all true, neither being nor non-being is the truth, reality must be characterised by neither or both. This opinion perhaps takes it for granted that all the Upanişads are a uniform stratum of literature which is never influenced by the philosophical speculations of the land in which they came to be shaped. It is just possible that various views held by different philosophers, not necessarily Vedic, must have influenced the Upanişadic thought as well.
VEDĀNTIC BEGINNING FOR SYĀDVĀDA NOT TENABLE.-Prof. A. B. Dhruva suggests that the Anirvacaniyatā-vāda of Vedānta has led to the Syādvāda of the Jainas as the next positive step. This deduction is based on the supposition that Syādvāda had non-Jaina beginnings as proposed by himself on account of its being attributed to 'recluses and Brāhmaṇas'. The deduction is fallacious, because, as shown above, the term recluse, a sramaņa, preēminently means a Jaina. Anirvacaniyată means that Māyā is such a principle that it can neither be called a being nor a non-being, nor both, and hence it is anirvacaniya.4 Māyā cannot be predicated in terms of being or non-being; in short it is a negative description, if at all I can call it so, of Māyā. It should be distinguished from the conditional statements of Syādvāda. It is true that there is some similarity between avaktavya proposition of Syādvāda and anirvacaniyatā of Vedānta, but the underlying idea is different; in the former (p. 89:] there is an attempt to coördinate affirmation and negation, while the latter wants to escape from both. Anirvacanīyatā-vāda cannot logically develop into Syādvāda, and perhaps even Prof. Dhruva is aware of it
1 A traditional definition, perhaps of sufficient antiquity is preserved in Abhayadeva's
commentary on Prasnavyäkarananga, and it runs thus: niggamtha-sakka-tāvasa-geruya
ājīva pamcahā samanā / Possibly it means a Magadhan recluse in general. 2 Indian H. Quarterly VIII, p. 721. 3 Dasave yäliyasutta chap. 7; also Acārānga and other texts. 4 Sāmkhyapravacanasūtra V, 54, especially the bhāşya of Vijñānabhikṣu; see Dasgupta:
History of Indian Philosophy Vol. I, pp. 461, 487.