Ahimsa and Jainism

Author(s): Vijayvallabhsuri
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 60

[ 53 ] accepted, because “ it is impossible that contradictory attributes, such as being and non-being, should, at the same time-belong, to one and the same thing; just as observation teaches that a thing cannot be hot and cold at he same moment." The Jains do not teach that a thing can be hot and cold at the same moment, but they do teach that a thing cannot be hot absolutely, and cannot be cold absolutely; it is hot under certain definite circumstances, and cold under others. The Jain do not teach that being and non-being (of itself) should at the same time belong to one and the same thing. What they teach is that in a thing there is being of itself, and non-being of other things, which means that a thing can be fully known only by knowing what it is and what is not. Sankara in fact, creates a man of straw, imputes to him imaginary doctrines, and by refuting them, he knocks him down. That is his glory.
Its first teaching is that the universe is not merely a congeries of substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra-cosmic.. creator, but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its very constitution. Law is not to be understood in the sense of a rule of action pers. cribed by authority, but as a proposition which