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CHAPTER V
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designated as otherness (paratva) in every real. This otherness is nothing other than the principle of difference in the constitution of reality which is identity-in-difference.
Thus negation with the Jaina is a significant negation which embodies a rich content within itself and not a species of total vacuity.
The proportion of the content comprised in the notion of negation or otherness depends, according to the Jaina thinkers, upon the range of reality engulfed within the context or situation concerned. A customer who wishes to buy a jar from a shop will be satisfied with bringing, under the aspect of otherness, the several kinds of wares which are not jars, whereas a kevalin (a realised soul) will have, in his vision which is sub specie aeternitatis, an illimitable plenitude of objects in their infinite network of complex relations present to him against a contemplated situation.
This relativistic trend of thought finds its consummate expression in the idea that the full knowledge of anything is inextricably bound up with the full knowledge of everything and vice versa. This truth is lucidly expressed by a stanza which states that "he who knows one thing completely knows all things", and that "he alone who knows all things knows anything completely”.
1. Cf. evaṁ caikasminnarthe jñāte sarveşām arthānām jñānam /
sarvapadārthaparicchedam antarena tannişedhātmana ekasya
vastuno viviktatayā paricchedāsambhavāt / SM (text), p. 92. 2. eko bhāvah sarvatha yena drstah sarve bhāvāḥ sarvathā tena
drstāḥ / sarve bhāvāḥ sarvathā yena drstā eko bhāvah sarvathā tena drstah // SM (text), p. 92 and OIP, p. 171.
