Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 173

156 Anekäntavāda and Syādvāda
belonging to different entities. What cannot be distinguished in any particular respect must be accepted as identical in that respect. The 'colour as colour' of a coloured thing cannot be distinguished from 'colour as colour' of another coloured thing, and therefore the two colours must be regarded as identical, though they belong to two separate things and may also be two different colours, say red and green. Thus 'red' and 'green' are identical as colour and different as specific determinations of it.14 Mere spatial separateness of two entities does not prove numerical difference of their characteristics. There can be spatial separateness without numerical difference, e.g., between two distant parts of a patch of colour, and similarly there can be numerical difference without spatial separateness, e.g., between the colour and shape of the selfsame object. Thus there is nothing repugnant in admitting the relation of identity-cum-difference in respect of characteristics between any one entity and another. Neither identity without difference, nor difference without identity is possible. Now as the identity presupposes the universal and the difference the particular, the real is a synthesis of the two. In other words, the real is a 'concrete universal.' "Things are," observes Professor Mookerjee, “neither exclusively particulars, nor are they exclusively universals, but they are a concrete realization of both. The two elements can be distinguished by reflective thought, but cannot be rent asunder."'15
This analysis of a real into universal and particular is significant in that it gives a penetrating vision of the interrelatedness of reals and their uniting bond. It should be understood that the two elements do not exhaust the real, but are mere indicators of the comprehensive and transcendent nature of it. “A real", again to quote Professor Mookerjee,"is neither a particular nor a universal in an exclusive manner but a synthesis which is different from both severally and jontly though embracing them in its fold. A real is sui
generis,':16
We have now seen how the pairs of characteristics—viz. being and non-being, unity and plurality or one and many, the universal and the particular-unfold the nature of a real as a microcosm and
14. W. E. Johnson has proposed to call such comparatively indeterminate characteristics
as colour and shape determinables in relation to such specific characteristics as red and circular which he calls determinates.--See his Logic, Part. I (Cambridge, 1921),
p. 174. 15. JPN, p. 6. 16. JPN, p. 13