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COSMOLOGY : OLD AND NEW
of which is altogether indeterminate?"
Or says Prof. S. K. Belvalkar, “The dogmatic part of Jaina philosophy... is altogether irreconcilable when taken in conjunction with its dialectical part viz. the famous syadvada theory, As is well-known, this theory denies the possibility of any predication: S may be or may not be or may both be and not be P. With such a purely negative or agnostic attitude one cannot afford to have any dogma. "320
Let us therefore examine the proposition set forth by Prof. Belvalkar :
“S may be or may not be or may both be and not be p."
Strychnine is an alkaloid fatal to life. People have committed suicide by taking it internally. Nevertheless it possesses healthgiving properties also and is prescribed by all medical men as a tonic. We therefore conclude that (1) Strychnine is a Poison from the viewpoint that it has killed several persons; (2) Strychnine is not a Poison from the viewpoint that it has restored health in several cases of anaemia.
Hence Strychnine is a Poison and not a Poison at the same time. Hence there is nothing absurd' in the symbolical statement :
S may be, may not be, or may both be and not be P.
To the question what S is generally, i.e., in all cases, there can be no direct answer. We shall say it is indescribable (Avaktavyam).
To quote another example from the domain of physics, light energy behaves as a wave-motion from the point of view of the phenomena of interference and diffraction; it behaves like a particie from the point of view of the phenomenon of photoelectricity; sometimes it behaves as both. To the question what light generally is, no direct answer can be given. The language fails to put the answer in one word. It was for this reason that Sir William Bragg huniourously remarked that on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we regard light as a wave and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we regard it as a particle. Put it in sober language it means that although the nature of light when viewed from different aspects is contradictory, nevertheless this gives us the complete picture of the thing.
This is exactly the Jaina viewpoint. In order to describe a thing completely it must be reviewed from seven different
320. Quoted from Under currents of Jainism.
