Canonical Niksepa

Author(s): Bansidhar Bhatt
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan

Page 14

PREFACE TO THE INDIAN EDITION
The original edition of The Canonical Niksepa (Studies in Jaina Dialectics) is now no longer available on the market since almost all its remaining copies were inundated and rendered totally unsaleable in 1988 in the warehouse of Messrs E.J. Brill, Leiden (Holland) - the Publishers of that edition. Soon after receiving the shocking news from Messrs Brill I became more and more determined to get it reprinted in India so that it might be easily available to any Indian institute or scholar. From its publication in 1978 up to today, no new texts have appeared on the market, and to the best of my knowledge, no fresh light has been shed on this specialized theme of the Nikṣepa. Hence neither a new edition of this book is necessary nor has its reprint required any radical alterations or additions. Almost all the significant reviews recommended this book and my approach to the problems therein. But Pt. D.D. MALVANIA, Sambodhi, vol. 8 (L.D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad 1980), pp. 173-174 criticised the english expression non-physical nature for the determinant "bhāva". He struggled hard to find and provide a better translation of "bhāva" on the basis of Jaina ontology. Not being satisfied by his own suggested translations ("internal", "nearer to the fact regarding the soul") he finally considered "modification" as a proper word for "bhāva". But his contention was not clear and became inconsistent, since he venturedtoutilize the word "modification" for both, physical nature ( = dravya) and non-physical nature ( = bhāva)!
For the sake of brevity I used the expression non-physical nautre for "bhāva" as opposed to the determinant "dravya" (physical nature) in a more general way and only rarely. This is quite appropriate to such a study which is entirely based on a historical aspect, where structural elements should be viewed as distinct and different from the standard philosophical concepts. This contention is expressly stated in the book more than once. I will quote here some sentences from it.
>> We are therefore in the first instance neither directly nor indirectly concerned with a well-defined concept or doctrine, ... «(Editors' Foreword).
We can only say that the concepts and categories have such and such meanings (as known from other contexts), and that the discourse follows this or that pattern, but it is not possible to "explain" the discussion in a conventional manner. <<< (Introduction p. xv).
>> The "determinants" are actually aspects, but their function is not uniform... << (p. 42).
» ...in a number of cases the translation of "bhāva" by "non-physical nature" is too narrow.<<(p. 58).
For the standard determinants acting in an obscure manner, and oscillation between determinant and predication, see pp. 57, 58.
The late Professor THOMAS BURROW, University of London Bulletin, xlii, Pt. 1 (1979), pp. 190-91 suggested including in this book a study of the post-canonical Nikṣepa