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138 First Steps to Jainism
2. The Origin
Jainism primarily is an ethical discipline, and as such all its tenets had a beginning in someone or other of the moral principles upheld by it. Thus the assertion or denial, affirmation or negation of a philosophical belief was to be carefully made in consonance with the rules prescribed for the right way of speaking in order to avoid false statements or unwarranted speculations having no bearing on the spiritual path of salvation. The metaphysical speculations about the beginning and end of the cosmos, or its eternality and non-eternality or the existence and non-existence of the soul before and after death, and such other issues that exercised the minds of the thinkers of those days were not considered worth while equally by Mahavira and Buddha. The latter's repugnance to such problems is attested by the ten avyākrtas (indeterminables) mentioned in the Majjhima Nikaya (II pp, 107ft, 176ft) and the former's in the Acaranga (1.8, 1.5) and Sūtrakrtānga (11.5, 1-5) where such speculations are considered as impractical and leading to laxity in moral conduct. While this basic attitude of the Buddha remained unmodified throughout his teaching, Mahavira appears to have allowed a relaxation in conformity with his realistic outlook in the interest of a dispassionate estimation of the worth of those speculations and the discovery of the cause of their origin. Consequently whereas the followers of the Buddha were interested more in the repudiation of the current antipodal doctrines than in their proper appreciation, the followers of Mahavira devoted their energies to a proper evaluation of these concepts with a view to finding out a solution of those contradictory views. This led to the origin of the Madhyamā pratipat (the middle path which eschewed both the antithetical alternatives of the Buddhists on the one hand, and the philosophy of anekanta (non-absolutism which attempted at synthesizing those alternatives into a comprehensive notion of the Jainas on the other.
3. The Three Stages :
Three distinct stages of development of the doctrine of anekanta are discernible in the early Jaina Agamas.
3 (a) Vibhajyavada: Vibhajyavada which is perhaps the earliest phase of the doctrine is found mentioned in the Sutrakrtanga (1.14.22) where a monk is asked to explain things through the principle of division of issues (vibhajjavayam ca viyag -arejja). The Bhagavati Sutra provides many an illustration where a question is dealt with in this way. On being asked by Gautama whether a person who says that he has
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