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CHAPTER IX
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or stages has been already traced out earlier in course of this section. According to the Jaina dialecticians the several schools which do recognise the independent objectivity of the world have inevitably, though often unwittingly, been confronted with the necessity of acknowledging the anekānta view, at least in some aspects of their conception of reality as well as of knowledge. The instances, which, among others include the Mimāṁsā, the Sānkhya, and the Vaišeșika schools, have already been mentioned elsewhere. He feels that they all have stopped short of consciously allowing the principle of distinction to reach its logical conclusion in an indeterminate approach to the problem. If the compulsive force of the spirit of anekānta is allowed to have its sway, then, according to him, reality would be infinitely diversified. The optimum point of the restless force of distinction is represented in the inexhaustible diversification of every detail in the physical and the mental universe consistently, of course, with the equally enduring identities in nature. The theory of manifoldness is therefore the story of the gradual unfoldment of the implications of distinction which is at the heart of everything. If this cardinal truth is disproved, then the entire structure of the anekänta philosophy will collapse like a house of cards.
To summarise the entire argument: The essence of realism is the principle objectivity, independence, or dis
1. The Vaišeşika comes nearest, particularly with respect to his
atomism, to anekavāda, but he stops at the level of what may be described as mechanical pluralism, rather than in determinate relativism of the Jainas. Cf. supra, ch. on Arthakriyakäritvam and the Vaiseşika's Ubhayavāda.
