Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 114

Anekāntavāda, Nayavāda and Syadvāda 97
assumption of distinction is allowed to operate as it should be, since distinction is an irrefutable fact of reality-it leads to the Jaina view, as a logical necessity, of an indeterminate reality. In other words, the developments of the two contrasting conceptions of reality, the Jaina and the Advaita, reveal the truth that if we follow a strictly monistic hypothesis of Advaitism we must inevitably accept some kind of mentalism or spiritualism which asserts the identity of the knower and the known, or rather the reality of the knower and the falsity of the known which, consequently, is treated as a projection of the knower. It is, therefore, not a surprise that Advaitism in India, like its Hegelian counterpart in the West, received the characteristically subjectivistic interpretation of the drstiśrstivāda of Prakäśänanda, which has its counterpart in the Berkeleyan theory of esse est percipi. Alternatively, in order to avoid a mentalistic or subjectivistic orientation in our approach to reality, if distinction or objectvity is admitted to be real, anekantavāda represents the most logical form which such a realistic procedure can take. Owing to the decisive significance of this issue the two considerations just outlined deserve a soine-what closer notice here. We may start with the second one first :
1. The Advaitic absolute is what may be described as a monolithic conception. It is also driven home to us, repeatedly, that its nature, like that of the Hegelian absolute is mentalistic or epistemic (prālitikasattvain).44 Nothing eise than it is real.45 This pan-psychic reality cannot, in the nature of the case, admit of objectivity or an independent non-mental principle. Hence the question of distinction cannot arise in it. If it does, we have to find something which is to be distinguished from the absolute. There is nothing answering such a description. It is not possible to speak of a distinction in a real where there is no possibility of an actual separableness in some genuine sense. This is the story of all idealism. viz., that the real therein stages its duel with itself, or at best, its shadow; it enacts a play in which the dramatis personae consist of one character only; or it constitutes a mus
44. Prätttikasattvam sarvasyeti siddham/ p. 537. Advaitasiddhi of Madhusu
danasarasvati (with three commentaries, etc. N.S. Ananta Krishna Šāstri, Bombay, 1917). avidyayonayo bhavah sarve'mi budbhuda iva/ksanamudhhaya gacchanti jñānaikajaladhau layam//Ibid. (quoted by the author from Sruti). etai sarvam mana eval (quoted in Gaudabrahmanandi, a com. on the above work Ibid., p. 537). jagato manahparināmatvamuktam Ibid. Lastly, asmadatmanah sarve pranah sarve lokah
sarve vedaḥ sarvani bhatani/ (quoted by Nyāyā mộtakāra) Ibid., p. 538. 45. See the above f.n, particularly the second quotation.