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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
some dangerous opponents? The subtle discussion of the agnostics had probably bewildered and misled many of their contemporaries. Consequently the syādvāda must have appeared to them as a happy way leading out of the maze of the ajñānavāda. It was the weapon with which the agnostics assailed the enemy, turned against themselves. Who knows how many of their followers went over to Mahāvira's creed convinced by the truth of saptabhanginaya?"
As regards the third charge, directed by Belvalkar, that syadvāda cannot spring from "one and the same philosophical background", and the supplementary charge, directed by Rao, that syadvada itself suffers from "self-contradiction", we may allow the charges to be answered by three of their fellow critics themselves. Answering Rao and Belvalkar in order, of course unwittingly, Radhakrishnan observes: "Sankara and Rāmānuja criticise the Saptabhangi view on the ground of the impossibility of contradictory attributes co-existing in the same thing". After quoting the relevant passage from Rāmānuja he proceeds to say: "The Jains admit that a thing cannot have self-contradictory attributes at the same time and in the same sense. All that they say is that everything is of a complex nature, and identity in difference. The real comprehends and reconciles differences in itself. Attributes which are contradictory in the abstract co-exist in life and experience. The tree is moving in that its branches are moving and it is not moving since it is fixed to its place in the ground"." Then incidentally dis
1. JSJ, Pt. II, Intro. p. XXVIII.
2. IP, Vol. I, p. 304.
