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An Epitome of Jainism therefore the two contradictory attributes of being and non-being cannot belong to any of the categories—being excluding non-being and vice versa non-being excluding being—the doctrine of the Arhat must be rejected”Sankara.*
"With the help of this, they prove that all things which they declare to consist of substance (dravya) and paryaya--to be existing one and permanent in so far as they are substances, and the opposite in so far as they are paryayas.
paryaya they understand the particular states of substances, and as those are of the nature of being as well as non-being, they manage to prove existence, non-existence and so on. With regard to this, the sútra remarks that no such proof is possible. 'Not so', on account of the impossibility in one, i. e. because contradictory attributes such as existence and non-existence cannot at the same time belong to one thing, not any more than light and darkness. As a substance and particular states qualifying it-and (by the Jains) called paryaya--are different things (padârtha), one substance cannot be connected with opposite attributes. It is thus not possible that a substance qualified by the particular state such as exist be qualified by the opposite state, i. e. non-eixstence. The non-permanency, further of a substance consists in its being the abode of those particular states which are called origination and destruction; how then should permanency, which is of an opposite nature reside in the substance at the same time ? Difference (bhinnatva) again consists in things being the abodes of contradictory attributes; non-difference, which is the opposite of this, cannot hence possibly reside in the saine things which are the abode of difference; not any more than the generic character of a horse and that of a buffalo can belong to one animal. But (the Jaina may here be supposed to ask the vedantin) how can you maintain that Brahman although one only, yet at the same time is the self of all ? Because we reply, the whole aggregate of sentient and non-sentient beings constitutes the body of the supreme person, omniscient, omnipotent and so on. And that the body and the person embodied and their respective attributes are of totally different nature (so that Brahman is not touched by the defects of this body). We have explained likewise. Moreover, as your six substances, soul and so on, are no substance and one paryaya, their being one substance and so on, cannot be used to prove their being one and also not-one and so on. And if it should be said that those six substances are such (viz. one and several, and so on) each owing to its own paryâya and its own nature, we remark that then you cannot avoid contradicting your own theory of everything, being an ambiguous nature. Things which stand to each other in the relation of mutual non-existence, cannot after all be identical. Hence the theory of the Jainas is not reasonable.”—Râmânuja.*
The authors of the Vedanta Sútras as well as the commentators reject the
* Thibaut's translation of the Bhagya.
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