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CHAPTER V
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Jatyantaravāda, or Arthakriyāvāda, are intended to reveal the manifestations of this presupposition in the different departments of reality.
It is also necessary to point out here that no rigid separation between the ontological and epistemological discussions can be made in the course of our treatment of the various topics in this work. Nevertheless the three chapters beginning with anekāntavāda, especially those on māyāvāda and syādvāda, may be described as largely epistemological as against the others which are largely ontological. The only topic which could be treated in relative isolation from ontological considerations is the one which is concerned with the ways of knowing (pramaņas). But it has been excluded from the scope of the present work for the reason already stated.
The main purpose of the present undertaking is to show, in the course of its progress, that the notion of identity-indifference is the pivot on which the entire ontological and the epistemological development in the Jaina philosophy turn. Anekantaväda is but an elaboration of the implications of this pivotal idea worked out in the various spheres of reality and knowledge. An exposition of this central idea of identity-in-difference, through a dialectical examination of its various implications as revealed in the various aspects of reality, is a necessary task. This is so especially for the reason that even competent scholars of Indian philosophy have often been inclined to consider the Jaina metaphysics as an "unsystematical system" in which "a mass of philosophical tenets" is not "upheld by one central idea". The phrases quoted here were uttered by Hermann Jacobi in the opening
