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CHAPTER IX
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not admit of distinction in any form in its ultimate nature of pure being (sat), and, therefore, develops itself, inevitably, into a spiritualistic ekāntavāda par excellence. This fact proves, indirectly, that once the initial assumption of distinction is allowed to operate-as it should be, since distinction is an irrefutable fact of reality—it leads to the Jaina view, as a logical necessity, of an indeterminate reality. In other words, the developments of the two contrasting conceptions of reality, the Jaina and the Advaita, reveal the truth that if we follow a strictly monistic hypothesis of Advaitism we must inevitably accept some kind of mentalism or spiritualism which asserts the identity of the knower and the known, or rather the reality of the knower and the falsity of the known which, consequently, is treated as a projection of the knower. It is, therefore, not a surprise that Advaitism in India, like its Hegelian counterpart in the West, received the characteristically subjectivistic interpretation of the drstisȚstivāda of Prakāśānanda, which has its counterpart in the Berkeleyan theory of esse est percipi. Alternatively, in order to avoid a mentalistic or subjectivistic orientation in our approach to reality, if distinction or objectivity is admitted to be real, anekāntavāda represents the most logical form which such a realistic procedure can take. Owing to the decisive significance of this issue the two considerations just outlined deserve a some-what closer notice here. We may start with the second one first :
1. The Advaitic absolute is what may be described as a monolithic conception. It is also driven home to us, repeatedly, that its nature, like that of the Hegelian absolute,
