Anekantavada

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Atmanand Jain Sabha

Page 52

15
Notwithstanding their agreement on these points, however, the Jainas and the Nyaya-Vaisesika thinkers differ from each other in respect of the question of relationship between substance on the one hand and the attribute and the mode on the other. The latter take substance to be a strictly self-identioal, immutable and transcendental reality. It is in essence, Kutastha i. e. like the Kantian Ding-an-sich, essentially unconnected with the phenomenal modes and features. These no doubt are attached to the substance 'intimately' but are really separable from it. As regards Moksa or emancipated state, for instance, the Nyaya thinkers propound the theory of Nava-gunoccheda or uprooting of nine characteristic features and conceive the soul as existing in itself, thoroughly devoid of all the conscious states or psychical attributes, as we oall them. Tbe Jainas criticise this view of the Nyāya School. They admit that if we want to fix upon the persistent character of an objeot and the indestructible nature of its basio substance, there is some sense in : waking a distinction between the substantial aspect of an objeot and its vanishing features. But this does not mean that the substantial and modal are two aspects in a thing, absolutely exclusive of each