Comparative Study Of Jaina Theories Of Reality And Knowledge

Author(s): Y J Padmarajaiah
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
that the ideas nurtured in one mental soil do not easily lend themselves to comparison with the ideas springing from a different mental soil. But this thought should not deter the seeker from his efforts. He should remember that despite their alien circumstances Sankara and Hegel (or more particularly F. H. Bradley) have, between them, more in common than Sankara and Kumārila on the one hand and Hegel (or Bradley) and Bertrand Russell on the other.
The present comparative study has been undertaken with the awareness of these difficulties. The problems selected for study are of a fundamental character and have not been treated, at any rate in recent times, by the same methods as are adopted here, nor have they been discussed in such detail.
Except in the course of a brief lecture by an Indian scholar, the important problem of relation (sambandha) has not as yet been treated by any writer. A similar neglect is shown in the case of the central problem of identity-in-difference which occupies the major portion of the first part of this study. Topics such as causal efficiency (arthakriyākāritvam), the concept of uniqueness (jātyantaratva), the dialectical implications of the doctrine of manifoldness (anekāntavāda), and the interrelatedness of anekāntavāda, nayavāda and syādvāda have not received the attention they deserve from the exponents of Indian philosophy. All this can be traced to the fact that Jainism in general and the Jaina philosophy in particular have been a neglected branch of the Indian studies. The present work has been undertaken to fill, in some measure, the gap created by prolonged neglect.