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CHAPTER XI
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to the same problem under a different setting it can again be dealt with by the application of this method. All the conclusions accumulating from the varied application of this method will, eventually, give us a conspectus of the complex truth with regard to a problem. The whole method, therefore, may be said to be one which helps a patient inquiring mind in its adventure of mapping out the winding paths running into the faintly known or unknown regions of reality and bringing them within the bounds of human knowledge.
Now we may consider some important criticisms directed against syādvāda.
A few criticisms, considered by the critics directing them to be fatal to syādvāda, come from the vedāntic quarters, especially advaitic absolutism. This is inevitable since advaitic absolutism and syādvādic relativism are diametrically opposed to each other in their fundamental presuppositions. Although these criticisms originated with the founders of the vedāntic schools it would be better to see them (the criticisms) through the eyes of the modern exponents of vedānta. An elaborate refutation of them lies outside the limits of this work. A few remarks may, however, be made in answer to them inserting, here and there, some observations of the critics themselves who, to some extent, answer, perhaps somewhat unwittingly, their fellow-critics.
seven principles are admitted then there may also be a hundred" (saptabhangi prasadena śatabhangyapi jāyate) PSKC, p. 14. Chakravarti observes in this connection : "The complex nature of a real object or dravya is amenable to description by the above seven and only seven propositions.” Ibid., p. 12.
