Book Title: Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture
Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
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246 Anekāntavāda and Syädvāda
movement of hands and feet, the head-dress and so on. The object may be a man or a branchless tree, and whichever it is, it must have the attributes in question. But the attributes escape observation, though the man recalls them. He knows what is a man and what is a tree. But owing to the lack of perception of the specific determinations of either, he is in a fix and his mind oscillates between them. In the case of sevenfold predication, on the contrary, existence and non-existence are each defined by their specific determinations, internal and external, and the cognition of these determinations makes doubt impossible. The cognition of common characteristics, when it is accompanied by the absence of the cognition of specific determinations, causes doubt, but not when such determinations are congnised. There can therefore be no room for doubt in sevenfold predication.
It has, however, been contended that though the conditions of doubt as enunciated above may not be present in full, there are certainly other conditions of doubt present in it. In the first place, there is divergence of opinion regarding the truth of the opposite attributes. Secondly, the Jaina must advance reasons in support of each of the opposite attributes and the consideration of such reason must result in doubt, as one set of reasons will offset the other, and so neither existence nor non-existence can be asserted with certitude. But the second contention is also hollow like the first, since it is inspired by misconception. It is assumed that the predicates, existence and non-existence, are mutually opposed and so they would cancel each other. But the predicates are neither indeterminate nor have they the same reference, which would make opposition inevitable. Existence has reference to the identity of the substance, which never suffers lapse in spite of the evanescent modes which happen to it and non-existence has reference to these modes, either defunctor unrealised. It may have reference to a distinct identity also. So there is no opposition, which would be irresistible, if the predication of opposite determinations were in the self-same reference. Fatherhood and sonship are opposed in the same reference. The same man cannot be the son and father of 'A.' But he can be the son of 'A' and father of 'B' and there is no contradiction, since the reference is different. A sound probans (hetu), e.g., smoke, is existent in the kitchen and the hill and is non-existent in the lake. There is no opposition here and so also in sevenfold predication, as the opposites are asserted to be true not in the same reference, but in a different reference.
