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 97

Pravacanasara
etc. This attack, apparently directed against the Nyaya-Vaiseşika, includes, by the further reference to two Nayas, even the Jaina authors like Kundakunda and Umāsvāti, because they accept only two Nayas and still maintain gunas as distinct from paryayas.
64
KUNDAKUNDA'S POSITION STATED AND SIDDHASENA'S OBJECTIONS EXPLAINED AWAY. I am perfectly aware that the line of demarcation is a slippery ground especially because of the confusion between the Jaina and Vaisesika positions, but so far as the position taken by Kundakunda and Umāsvāti is taken into. consideration they have enough justification as shown above. Siddhasena, I think, has confused the Nyaya-Vaiseṣika and Kundakunda's positions. The term guna is a blank cheque in the Sanskrit language,1 and one has to be cautious in scrutinizing the different shades of meaning even though the same word might have been used for all practical appearance. The Samkhya gunas, for instance, are not mere qualities but something substantial. According to Kundakunda guna is an essential differentia of a substance, and a substance without guna has no existence; the relation between guna and dravya is that of difference-in-congruency. According to Nyaya school, however, the substance in the first moment of its creation is without qualities, and only in the next moment it comes to be intimately united with them. Secondly, many of the Nyaya-Vaiseṣika gunas like sabda etc. are no more gunas according to Jainism but merely forms of matter. Lastly, the qualitative difference in atoms corresponding to air, fire, water and earth as accepted by the Vaisesikas is not possible according to Jainism. Thus therefore the Jaina and Nyaya-Vaiśeşika ideas about guna should not be confused. It is already shown how Kundakunda has clearly stated that guna is different from paryāya; that gunas and paryāyas are different can be shown by an illustration as well: taking a golden pot and an earthen one, the paryaya is the same but the gunas of gold and earth are not the same; and secondly taking a golden ring and a golden bangle, the qualities with the substratum gold are the same but the paryayas are different. So, if paryayas and (p. 68:) gunas are distinct, then why not have a Gunarthikanaya besides Dravyarthika and Paryāyārthika?. It is really an interesting and legitimate question raised by Siddhasena and needs explanation. The paryaya is an external imposition; it may be of manifold kinds; the same paryaya may be possible on different substance-grounds; the same substance may be subjected to different paryayas at different times; and the paryaya is not essentially inherent in the very nature of the substance. The only relation between substance and paryaya is that a substance cannot be imagined without one or the other paryaya. Paryaya stands for the fluctuating aspect of substance and qualities, and requires to be stated when anything about a substance is to be said; and hence the necessity of a Paryayarthikanaya. As distinguished from this, we have Dravyarthikanaya in which the attention is directed not towards the fluctuating
1 See Nyayakośa under guna p. 261.
2 Max Müller: Six systems of Indian Philosophy, 1st Ed., p. 468.
3 Pravacanasāra II, 40 Pañcāstikāya (SBJ III) p. 84 etc.; and Davvasamgaha 16 (SBJ I, p. 47).