Encyclopaedia Of Jainism

Author(s): P C Nahar, K C Ghosh
Publisher: Satguru Publications

Page 30

(vi) But those who have followed our exposition of the Jain principles of epistemology ending with Syadvádır running up to Chapter XII, will be at one with us when we state that the dialectic method of reasoning identifying logic with metaphysic was not Hegel's own making. It originated with the Jain sages and omniscient kevalins, and has been prevelant in the field of philosophy in India from a time when Greece and Rome those cradles of European civilization, were still steeped in the darkness of ignorance. It is true that with the Jains the Absolute is but an Expression of Unity in Difference as distinguished from the Absolute beyond the Relative of the Vedântins ( Vide Chapter XI), and that the world-process is also without beginning and end (Vide Chapter XII to XV); but the soul according to Jainism does not remain for ever entangled in the meshes of the dialectic process of evolution without knowing any rest or repose anywhere. The Jains, as well as every other system of Indian thought and culture, hold that the Jiva will never remain eternally caught up in the never-ending process of evolution. It