________________
79
significance of the word, " cow " consists simply in shutting out the ideas of otber beings, then for our positive apprehension of the cow-creature ( which wo undoubtedly have, as pointed out above ) we are to find out words, other than the word " Cow."
In the same manner, the Sunya-vada doctrine of the Buddhist Sohool can be looked upon as useful to a certain extent, in as muoh as it considered the nature of the world from the negative stand-point. This negative knowledge certainly presented one aspect of a rational view of the universe. It was a realistio study and its use. fulness,-Artha-Kriya-Karitva or practical utility, which the Buddhists looked upon as the sole test of reality,-is manifest when it is remembered that an entire moral system and a body of perfect rules of conduct were built upon it. The Sunyavāda, however, was wrong in contending that the negative view of the world which it embodied was the only possible rational view and that any positive conception of the universe to supplement it, was uncalled for.
Negation, as we have seen is implied in affirmation but is not to be identified with it. In negation and for the matter of that, in the second Bhanga of the sovenfold predication, -we
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org