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them and avoided the seeming contradiction by showing (or exposing) the different senses in which these predicates could be used. Thus, it could hardly be regarded as an acceptance of a real contradiction. To use the later day philosophic terminology of the Jains, the world, from the point of view (naya) of continuity, may be called eternal, but from the point of view of change of its states, it is non-eternal. This probably foreshadowed also the Jain view of synthesis of the Buddhist doctrine of universal flux with the Vedānta doctrine of the unchanging Brāhmaṇ.
Regarding the third and the fourth avyākhyata questions, Mahāvīra had the following to say:
Skandakaļ, the resolve for query arose in your mind that 'Is the world finite? Is the world infinite? etc.'
The reply to this query is - Skandaka, that the world has been propounded by me in four ways, viz., with respect to substance, space, time and modes. With respect to substance, the world is an unitary entity and it has an end. With respect to space, the world is 10' X 10' times innumerable yojanas in length and breadth and 10" X 10' times innumerable yojanas in circumference. Thus, it has an end.
With respect to time, it was never non-existent; it is never nonexistent; it will never be non-existent in future ,it was, it is and it will be, it is eternal, fixed, perennial, indestructible, imperishable, ever present and persistent, and thus it has no end, i.e., it is infinite.
With respect to modes, the world has an infinite number of colour-modes, an infinite number of smell-modes, an infinite number of taste-modes, an infinite number of configurationmodes, an infinite number of heavy-cum-light-modes and an
'Bhagavatī. op.cit., Sutra-2.1.45. 2 Ibid, 2.45, p. 346.
