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understood if we are not aware of the background against which it is made. This is because the so-called 'primarily conceptual' method is also verbal, inasmuch as it not merely requires the aid of words for the expression of its various standpoints but also has as many as three, among its seven, standpoints which are exclusively concerned with the verbal problems, and are therefore designated as sabdanayas. Similarly, in contradistinction to the verbal elements of the
conceptual'nayavāda, the mainly verbal' method of syādvāda is so much charged with the epistemological character that we might say that its verbal side is more instrumental than intrinsic in value. The term 'conceptual' may, however, be applied to the four dravyanayas, under nayavāda, with relatively greater propriety. But under syädvāda no distinctions, such as the verbal modes of syādvāda and the non-verbal or the epistemological modes of syädvāda, can be made since all modes are both verbal and epistemological. This is so in spite of the fact that much care and exactitude are needed in the verbal formulation and manipulation of the modal judgments.
Leaving aside the epistemological content of the modal judgments for the moment, the description of all the modes of syādvāda as verbal also may give rise to a possible objection that such a description should not be applied to the mode which contains the 'inexpressible' (avaktavya) as its predicate. For the 'inexpressible'is, ex hypothesi, a verbal failure insofar as it is incapable of a co-presentation' or a simultaneous expression of the positive and the negative traits of a real in a single attempt. Describing a mode as verbal
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