Aapta Mimansa

Author(s): Saratchandra Ghoshal
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 77

CHAPTER I
75
16. By consecutive application of the two, we get the category where both (existence and non-existence) can be predicated. Owing to absence of power of expression, the category of indescribability arises (when all qualities are desired to be expressed at the same time). From its own cause, the remaining three categories followed by avaktavya arise.
COMMENTARY The remaining modes of predication are referred to in this verse.
The third mode is syādasti-năsti. It has already been mentioned in the commentary to the previous verse that every substance “when thought of in respect of its substance (dravya), place (kşetra), time of existence (kāla) and attributes (bhāva), does in a certain sense exist; and when the substance, place, time and attributes of other. things are thought of, the thing itself does not exist. So in this third way of speaking, two natures of the thing (existence of the thing and non-existence of other things) are considered, first one and then the other. For example, the jar is a jar and is not cloth.”l
The fourth mode is syād-avaktavya. “This fourth way of speaking denies the possibility of mentioning at one and the same moment what the thing is and what it is not. The necessity for this way of speaking is that these two natures (what it is and what it is not) exist in a thing at one and the same time (or simultaneously), but it is impossible to express them simultaneously; when we see that there are two trees, a mango-tree and an orange-tree, they both exist simultaneously, but they come to our knowledge first one and then the other, and not simultaneously.”
The fifth mode is syād-asti chāvaktavya. “In this mode of speaking it is what the thing (jar, for instance) is that
1. Frist Principles of the Jaina Philosophy, H.L. Jhaveri, p. 38-39. 2. Ibid, p. 39.