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substantive in itself. The Jainas point out that the Vaibeşika conception of non-existence is open to all the formidable criticisms of the Sankhya, the Vadanta, the Charváka and the Buddhist thinkers and that those criticisms are roally unanswerable from the Vaiseșika view-point about non-existence. By depriving non-existence of an absolute and abstract oharacter and by making it a part of the nature of a real object, the Jainas, on the contrary, steer clear of those criticisms.
Thus the Jainas maintain that like affirmation, negation forms & part of the nature of reality. If the pitoher exists in some respeots, in some rospeots it does not exist. If a tree is mangofruit-bearing in some respects, it is also in some respects not mango-fruit-bearing. Thinkers of the Nyaya School admit that non-existence is real but contend that it inheres not in the thing of which existence is affirmed but in that which is other than it In other words, according to them, the non-existence of the pitcher is real as much as its existence; but while existenoo-as-pitcher pertains to the nature of the pitcher, the non-existenco88-pitober inheres only in the things like cloth which are different from the pitcher. In the same manner, the Nyāya position is that while the cbaracter of bearing-mango-fruits is essential
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