Jain Journal 2000 10

SR No.: 520140
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 70
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 4 MB

Page 46

BOOK REVIEW
then hastens to add : "[M]y reference to the non-bivalence logic or para-consistent logic, in connection with Jainism, should not be overemphasized' (p. 15).
The problem of relativism inherent in syadvada has been discussed by several contributors. However, no concrete solution has been offered as to the relation between the indeterminate and the relative. L.V. Joshi's article on the Nyāya criticism of anekānta based on Bhāsarvajna's Nyayabhusana raises, inter alia, a crucial problem related to the editing of ancient texts from MSS. Svāmi Yogindrānanda, editor of the editio princeps of Nyāyabhūsana, has put a passage within quotes 'assuming it to be a verbatim quotation from Akalanka's Tattvārthavārtika.' Such an assumption proved to be ill founded, for Bhāsarvajña merely 'paraphrased the TAV text in his own way' (p. 97).
Ramjee Singh's article on the relevance of anekānta in modern times may appear to some readers as an exercise in wish-fulfilment. One also wonders whether the conception of sarvadharmasamanvaya (syncretism) sound in the Vallabha philosophy can truly be called 'one of the forms of this very saptabhangi' (asserted by no less a scholar than Pandit Sukhlalji Sanghvi).
D.S. Kothari's article first appeared in Niels Bohr. A Centenary Volume, edited by A.P. French and P.J. Kennedy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 325-31) - a fact not mentioned anywhere in this book. Matilal once refers to Haribhadra's Sarvadarsana-samgraha and Gunaratna's commentary on it (p. 4). Should the title not be Şaddarśana-samuccaya ? (See the work in the Bibliotheca Indica edited by Luigi Suali, Calcutta : The Asiatic Society, 1905-14, reprinted 1986).
Speaking of syādvāda and its scientific potential, J.B.S. Haldane once pointed out that, instead of devoting our lives to composing commentaries on the works of ancient philosophers, we can do mere honour to their memories by thinking for ourselves, as they did ('The Syädvada System of Predication', Sankhya, Vol. 18 Parts I and II, 1957, p. 199). Unfortunately we in India are still content with interpreting rather than trying to apply ancient wisdom to modern areas of research. Logic, like mathematics, should be viewed primarily as a tool for application in different fields of study. However, to most of the writers who have contributed to this volume, logic is nothing more than an end in itself, something per se. It is high time that we learn to think in terms of nravis as well