Central Philosophy of Jainism Anekanta Vada

Author(s): Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nagin J Shah, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 66

XIV
TRADITIONAL OBJECTIONS
Critics of the Jaina sevenfold formula have mentioned many faults or anomalies that are supposed to arise if the doctrine is accepted as a philosophic method. The Jaina writers beginning from Akalanka and Vidyananda have analyzed these objections and tried to answer them in detail. Let us make a brief survey of these objections and answers.
Samkara in his Brahmasutra-bhāṣyal13 mentions, among other things, two specific problems involved in the Jaina position: virodha 'contradiction, and samsaya 'doubt' or 'dubiety.' Santarakṣita adds another, samkara 'intermixture. 114 Akalanka notes seven demerits of the anekānta doctrine in his Pramāṇasangraha: dubiety, contradiction, lack of conformity of bases (vaiyadhikaranya), joint fault" (ubhaya-dosa), infinite regress, intermixture, and absence (abhāva). Vidyananda gives a list of eight faults; he omits "joint fault" from the list of Akalanka, but adds two more: 'cross-breeding' (vyatikara) and the lack of comprehension (apratipatti).115 Prabhäcandra mentions also a list of eight, but he replaces 'lack of comprehension' by the above-mentioned "joint fault"116 Vadideva drops "absence" (abhava) from the list of Prabhācandra and makes it a list of seven faults.117 Most of these faults or defects are only minor variations of the three major problems faced by the Jaina doctrine of the sevenfold predication: intermixture, dubiety and contradiction.
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Vyomasiva has mentioned another unique problem of the anekānta doctrine. 118 He says that a free (liberated=mukta) person will not really be liberated under anekänta doctrine. For he will be considered, from one point of view, both liberated and not liberated, and, from another point of view, simply not-liberated. Besides, if the statement "the thing has anekanta nature" involves an unconditional predication, then it falsifies the anekanta doctrine, for, according to the anekanta principal no philosophic predication should be unconditional or unqualified. But if the above predication is conditionalized with the syat operator following the Jaina anekänta principal (viz., "in a certain sense, the thing has anekänta nature "and" in a certain sence, it does not have anekanta nature," and so on), then we will be led into a paradoxical situation or circularity.
The above problem of anekänta is reminiscent of a similar problem or paradox posed against the "Emptiness" doctrine of the Madhyamika.