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256
JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
one.... They have no meaning or existence taken individually and in their union they are not two separate things stuck together but two that have lost or dissolved their duality in a higher unity." This passage, like the other several passages in the book which are suffused with a "blind adoration to the German Idealism", as Chakravarti describes,"
2.
EJNG, p. 109 and p. 114. By a curious irony this critic also becomes, eventually, a victim to the Hegelian hypnosis of which he is initially critical in the authors of the Epitome and goes to the extent of even declaring firmly that "The Jaina metaphysics does not contemplate the Hegelian absolute." (PSKC, Intro., p. li). Referring to the Jaina conception of dravya as an 'organic unity' of 'permanency in change' he writes, in a later passage: "Hegel is responsible for introducing such a conception of reality in modern thought. Jainas in their conception of Dravya have anticipated such a modern idea, several centuries in advance. Of course the concept was not fully worked out because of other limitations peculiar to their age.” Op. cit., p. 5.
One might concede that there is, as it has been already pointed out earlier (supra, pp. 98-101), a certain similarity between the Jaina view of reality and that of Hegelianism with respect to the latter's 'relative' or 'transitional' phases. But it cannot be conceded that the Jaina view, when 'fully worked out' would, unless there was a radical departure from its fundamental ontological presupposion (viz., the bhedābheda nature of reality), ever take the Hegelian view in its (the latter's) final form of absolutism (abhedavāda or the identity view) by which Hegel firmly swears. But Chakravarti seems to regret that the Jaina view did not take the final form of Hegelianism "because of other limitations peculiar to their (the Jainas') age.” While admitting that the Jaina metaphysics has, in general, remained comparatively stagnant in its growth, it would be wrong to think, on this specific issue, that it would be more logical if it had gone the way of Hegel in search of an Absolute. If it did so it would fall into the very pitfall which it has been doing its best to avoid throughout its polemical history.
