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CHAPTER I
An Objection Stated, and a Scheme of Five Types of Approach to the Problem of the Nature of Reality Formulated.
The present study aims at a critical and comparative exposition of certain ontological and epistemological problems centering round the most fundamental metaphysical presupposition of identity-in-difference in Jaina philosophy. It will be divided into two parts: Ontology (Part I) and Epistemology (Part II). The first part will comprise eight chapters in the course of which a critical examination will be undertaken, of the various non-Jaina schools—not excluding a few striking trends of Western schools—of philosophy, as well as of the Jaina school, from the point of view of the problem of the nature of reality as identity-in-difference. The latter part will include three chapters which contain, essentially, a treatment of some topics which have a bearing on the modes or methods of valid knowledge in Jaina philosophy. These topics are the doctrines of manifoldness (anekāntavāda), standpoints (nayavāda), and the dialectic of conditional predications (syādvāda).
A firm grasp of the Jaina view of reality as identityin-difference can follow only when it is distinguished from the other views. We see among these other views several types : one of these types recognises mere identity as the
