Comparative Study of Indian Science

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: C S Mallinath

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Viseshamis raised, the Jaina logic becomes sharply opposed to the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika. “Being," says Kanada "is a separate Reality from Substance, Attribute and Activity (1. 1. 8.)". The Nyaya and the Vaiseshika doctrine, in other words, is that the Universal does not underlic but rather co-exists with the Individual. This transcendentalist doctrine of the Samanya is obviously similar to the Platonic theory of the Idea in ancient Greece and the Universalia Ante Res doctrine of the mediaeval Europe. But the transcendental doctrine of the Universal, in its extreme form, is an impossible position. The Samanya must be essentially related to the Visesha, the Universal must be in the Indiyidual. Accordingly, even the Platonic, the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika philosophers often lean towards the immanental theory of the Universal. It is Aristotle in ancient Greece who upheld such a theory. In mediaeval Europe also, there were prominent thinkers c.g., Gilbert of Poitiers, who in their own scholastic way contended that the Universalia must be in re. It is the Jaina philosophers in India who held that the Samanya, although transcendent in some sense, is immanent in the Visesha and that these are practically the two aspects of the selfsame reality. Ratnaprabhacharyya, the Jaina commentator means this when he says, "As the Universal is