Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 116

Anekantavāda, Nayavāda and Syādvāda 99
'empirical' or 'epistemic' phenomenon or an ‘antithesis'.
There is, therefore, nothing strange in the fact that the mind-ridden Absolute Idealism gave rise to the curious doctrine of Drstisrstivāda or Jñatasattāvāda of Prakasananda and others, which affirms that a thing exists only when it is perceived. In this view the “blue”, for instance, and its awareness are one, and there is no external object apart from its cognition.”:47 Alluding to this view an Indian critic observes : “The whole world is thus only a psychic modification and has no reality outside the mind."'48 Prakasan anda himself observes : The wise maintain the psychological ideality of the world, the ignorant its objective reality.'' 49
This view, in which 'spirit greets the spirit', or drsti is śrsti, has its close parallel in the well-known Berkeleyan view esse is percipi. Referring to the relation of the 'unthinking things' of the objective world to this ‘intuitive or self-evident' principle Berkeley observes : "Their esse is percipi; nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.”50
Drstiśrstivāda and its close Western parallel have been mentioned here, not merely because they are a particular school of idealism but 47. P.N. Srinivasachari's Aspects of Advaita (Sri Krishna Library series, Madras,
1949), p. 16. 48. Ibid. See also pp. 97-98. 49. Jñānasvarüpamevâhur jagadetadvicaksanah / arthasvarüpam bhrāmyantah
pasyanteti kudrstayah // The following line also expresses the same idea more pithily: drstireva bhavet śrstirdrstimate..
These lines have been quoted in M.N. Sircar's The System of Vedantic Thought and Culture (published by University of Calcutta, 1925), p. 126, footnotes 1 and 2. See also pp. 125-26 (the text).
Madhusudana also observes :imameva ca drstis rstivādamacaksate asmins ca pakse jiva eva svajñanavasajjagadupadananimittam ca / dravyam ca sarvam pratitikam/Siddhantabindu (of Madhusudana with a Com. by Puru'sottama, ed. P.E. Divan' GOS, Baroda, 1933), p. 29. See also Advaitasiddhi and Prakasānanda's Siddhāntamuktāvali (E.T. by Arthur Venis, Reprint from the Pandit, Benares, 1890), p. 25 ff. (text).
Even the so-called 'opposite view' to this (drstis rstivada) viz., srstidrstivāda, also retains the character of mentalism in so far as it maintains that the world is "creation or emanation" from Brahman (see Siddhantamuktavali, Pref. p. II, f.n. 1). The difference, if there is any at all, is that in srstidrstivāda, the world is supposed to 'precede' our knowledge of it, while in drstiśrstivāda it is said to be concurrent with (because it is also the creation of) our knowledge. The difference, however, is not material owing to the fact that Brahman is only an extension of the individual
psychic principle, 50. Of the Principles of Human Knowledge (Vol. I of The Works of George Berkeley, in
4 Vols., ed. A.C. Fraser, Oxford, 1901), p. 259.