Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 69

52 Anekantavāda and Syādvāda
thorough and careful examination of the other Indian systems of thought, each of which, according to the Jainas, reveals but one aspect of the objective reality. Historically speaking, Anekāntavāda arose as a reaction against the two diametrically opposed views, namely the view of reality of the Vedāntists which makes it to be purely unchangeable, immutable and static, and the view of the Buddhists which takes the view of reality as change, movement, phenomena following one another without any noumenal background. The Vedāntist makes the Soul, immutable and all-pervading, as the sole reality admitting of no change, action and quality, and this is according to the Jainas one extreme in which only the pure sattā or Being is posited. The Buddhists take the other extreme which negates sattā and makes reality to be constituted of change, action, movement and phenomena. The Jainas criticise the Nyāya and the Vaiseșika as only one-sided views of the nature of reality as these philosophers consider objects separately either in terms of generality or in terms of particularity while the true nature of the object reveals that it is at the same time both general and particular. Generality grows out of the discovery of a common feature of the particulars which thus help us to derive the idea of generality and each of the particulars also shares in the generality to which they jointly contribute. In this way the Jainas make it clear to us that the proper understanding of a Real can never be acquired from any one viewpoint which confines itself to any one or other of the innumerable aspects it is capable of. The Vastu or Real according to the Jainas has many aspects ; so to do justice to the true nature of a Real, we must always avoid any one-sided representation of it.
The Jainas have come to this view by a deep analysis of the Nature of a Real. The Real is something permanent in the midst of changes. It is descrided as having two aspects. In one aspect it is something permanent and in the other aspect it is changeful, evolving qualities yet losing and replenishing them. A Real, therefore, by nature is what may be called substance-cum-attribute and permanence- cum-change. The Jainas further state that in considering a real we must take note of the fourfold condition which determines its Nature. These four conditions are substance, place, time and state, which again fall under two heads : its own nature and the nature other than its own. Each real will be an existent under its own nature i.e. it will exist in its own substance, in its own place, in