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Syādvāda an Intellectual Ahimsā
195
seemingly contradictory statement in the scriptures of the same creed as well as in those of different faiths; for it does often happen that a statement which is wrong from one particular point of view is not so from another, e.g., one observer might say that a bowl full of water
tain no air, while an other might describe it as containing nothing else but air, both being right from their respective stand-points since water is only gaseous matter in its essence though manifested in the form of a liquid substance owing to the action of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen on one another.
For the above reason the Jaina Siddhānta insists on the employment of the word syāt (somehow or from a particular point of view) before every judgement or statement of fact, though in ordinary parlance and composition it is generally dispensed with. There are three kinds of judgement, the affirmative, the negative and the one which gives expression to the idea of indescribability, of these, the first kind affirms and the second denies the existence of a quality, property or thing, but the third declares an object to be indescribable. A thing is said to be indescribable when both existence and non-existence are to be attributed to it at one and the same time. These three forms of judgement give rise to seven possible modes of predication which are set out below: (1) Syādasti (from some particular point of view, a thing may be
said to exist), Syānnāsti (from some particular point view the thing does not
exist), (3) Syādasti násti (affirmation of existence from one point of view
and of non-existence from another), (4) Syädavaktavya(from both the existence and non-existence point
of view attributed at one and the same time the thing is indescribable) Syādasti avaktavya (a combination of the second and the fourth
forms of predication) (6) Syānnāsti avaktavya( a combination of the second and the forth
forms), and
(2)
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