Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 19

2 Anekantavāda and Syâdvāda
the sensual level does not cognise the object directly and this is the reason why there are varieties in such cognitions. The Vedänta rejected the modes as unreal while accepting the substance alone as ultimately true. The Buddhist, on the other hand, rejected the substance as imaginary by accepting the reality of the modes. According to Jaina logic, both the substance and the modes are ultimately true. When the substance hidden under the waves of modes has no appeal, the modes come up prominently at the cost of the substance which lies submerged under them. When the modes, like waves, lose their identity in the calmness of the unfathomed ocean of substance, the latter alone appears to be ultimately real. The Vedantic monism is like the waveless ocean and the Buddhist phenomenalism is the state of the ocean agitated by waves. Non-absolutism appropriates them both, as so finely expressed in the following beautiful imagery-Aparyayam vastu samasyamanama- dravyametacca vivicyamānam/ Ade'sabhedoditasaptabhanga- madidrsastvam budharūpavedyam//2
From the synthetic viewpoint the object is without modes and from the analytic standpoint it is unsubstantial. “You have realised. Oh Lord, the truth in its sevenfold aspects on account of sevenfold view-points, that reveals itself only to the Wise.
The substance presents itself when our thinking is synthetic, losing all its modes and when our approach is analytical, the modes become prominent at the cost of the substance. In the formative period of anekanta some principles of logical concomitance were discovered and that constituted an epoch-making achievement of that age.
The first axiom of non-absolutism is the concomitance of the universal and the particular. The one without the other is inconceivable. The upshot is that a mode without a substance is as impossible as a substance without a mode. There is no such gap between truth and untruth. There is hardly any line of demarcation between the truth of the concept and the falsity of another. The gap between them, if any, can be understood if one realises that the particular bereft of universal is as nonsensical as the universal bereft of the particular. Both the concepts, viz. the universal and the particular, are true if they are mutually dependent. One rejecting the other is false, while both are the true representatives of their own objects of reference.
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2. Anyayogavyavacchedadvātrinsika, verse 23.