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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Theory of Anekāntavāda 63
inhering in anything beyond them. Other objects like attributes and wholes exist as distinct but inseparable from their substrata. Finally the relation Samavāya or this concrete identity is also a distinct object. Thus priority is assigned, as has been pointed out, in this system to distinction.
The relation of Samavāya implies three grades of distincts--objects that must be in some substratum, the substrata, and the relation itself. The question may be asked if relation is a distinct being in the sense in which the objects of the other two grades are distinct. These objects are distinct as the terms of the relation : objects which do not inhere in anything are still determinate as having attributes and wholes inhering in them. Not that the knowledge of a substance presupposes the knowledge of what inheres in it: it is known as distinct prior to the analysis. But in point of being, every object except relation must either have something inhering in it or itself inhere in something else or be in both these situations. Relation is not itself related to anything beyond, for then there would be a regressus ad infinituin. It is a distinct existent only by self-identity or sva-sanavāya.
Self-identity however is not a relation of distincts at all. Granting---what is not admitted by all-that Samavāya is known by perception, this self-identity or Sva-Samavāya is not a perceptible fact but is only an artificial thought-content. Self-related means unrelated in the objective. Samavaya is certainly known along with its terms but as a fact, it is only unrelated and cannot be even said to be definitely different from its terms. Can it then be determinate in itself ? It may indeed be conceded that the determinateness of a related term does not in point of being depend on its relations: the relation of a term presupposes an intrinsic determination in the term. But that need not mean that the term is itself unrelated and has relation only added to it. In point of being the relation of Samavāya is eternal and so the related term is never unrelated, though as a term it is distinguishable from the relation. Relation then as an unrelated term is not even determinate and it is a contradiction to speak of it as self-related or unrelated and yet as determinate.
In the two conceptions of indentity-in-difference above considered, the subordination of either relation to the other appears to lead to a contradiction. Shall we then take the relations to be merely coordinate ? We may take one type of such a view as
