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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
The aposterioristic view of the Jaina, on the contrary, takes the attitude that experience is the source of the knowledge as well as of the validity of its truth. There is, on this view, no transcendental or transempirical region of pure' thought, from which the so-called contingent and particular truths can derive their truthfulness or validity and universality. Experience which gives rise to a knowledge of truths also imprints on it the signature of their selfcertitude and self-validity.
This assumption, viz., that experience is the source of knowledge and the validity of all truths, underlies the Jaina assertion that if experience does not vouch for contradiction', then contradiction itself is false' and not the experience. Hence the Jaina feels that his view of reality as existence-cum-non-existence (bhāvābhāvātmaka or sadasadatmaka) is irrefutably valid.
1. The refutation of Virodha, supposedly the most important of the doșas attributed to the Jaina theory of reality, is
1. pratīyamāne vastuny avirodhāt. PKM, p. 93. See also PHMS, p. 28. 2. Pascal offers a corrective to those who are so obsessed with con
tradiction that they see it even where it is not. Although the Jaina does not subscribe to Pascal's view as indicated in the following passage, it is interesting to observe how Pascal gives a glimpse into the other side of the picture, as it were, than the one given by the idealistic enthusiasts:
"Contradiction is”, observes Pascal, "a poor sign of truth; much that is certain is open to contradiction, much that is false passes without contradiction. Neither is contradiction a mark of untruth, nor absence thereof a mark of truth". Pascal's Pensees, p. 95, H. F. Stewart, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1950).
