Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 73

56 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
position and negation are applicable both in succession as well as in simultaneity, the sixth and the seventh judgments are perfectly justified. This gives us how the sevenfold predication or Saptabhangi-naya of the Jainas has a sufficient reason for its formation and how it has opened a new line of epistemological approach to Reality. But we should not forget to mention the further question as
even and seven only and neither more nor less. Vimaladāsa, the author of "Saptabhangi-tarangini”, in his refutation of this objection has begun his polemic by reference to a very ingenious example. He asks us to consider the taste of a drink prepared from curd, sugar, chilly, pepper, etc mixed together. Now the taste of the drink is really indefinable in the sense that its taste and flavour are different form those of each of the ingredients, but that indefinable taste is quite a matter of our feeling ard enjoyment. That this indefinbale taste exists is clear from the fact that in it we feel in some from the taste and flavour of the ingredients like curd etc. Similarly in each fact of the indefinble are present the feelings of somewhat existence, somewhat nonexistence, the successive feelings of existence and non-existence and the feeling of simultaneity of existence and non-existence. Then Vimaladāsa takes up the question as to why the number of judgments must be seven. The answer which he gives is that any enquiry into the nature of things arises out of doubt about it. Doubt begets enquiry. But doubt arises when generally there are two contradictory ideas. But in the case of doubt as conceived by the Jaina, there are really no rigid contradictories, the apparent contradiction being due to our neglect to see the fourfold conditions of substance, place, time and state, as the case may be. Anyway since there is apparent contradiction, that must be the source of doubt. Now taking existence and non-existence as such, there may be real contradiction between them, but the Jaina always warns us against this absolute contradiction and qualifies the statement of each of the contradictories by prefixing the term "somehow” and the traditional theory of contradiction as the source of doubt cannot arise between "somehow existent'? and "somehow non-existent'' but always between somehow existent and absolutely existent. The Jaina has elaborately shown that any real exists in its own nature and is non-existent in consideraticn of a nature other than its own and this 'somehow character has been