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Kundakunda: The Samayasara 253
vyavahāra-niścaya distinction. The former is essentially an intellectual strategy for evading confrontation with other schools over what appear to be internal contradictions in Jaina metaphysics, as well as for avoiding the logical resolution of such contradictions, with all that that would imply for ethical conduct.41 The latter, on the other hand, has, like Nāgārjuna's Madhyamika teaching, a soteriological function.
This is not to say that there may not be an awareness at one level of the text of the dangers to Jaina orthopraxy inherent in doctrines present in another layer; the distinction between the gāthās which are compatible with anekāntavāda and those which take an ekanta view is frequently and perhaps deliberately blurred. However, once an absolute niscaya view has been introduced, its superiority from a logical point of view is unambiguous.42 Any attempt thereafter to overlay it with anekāntavāda must be considered unconvincing. The only real solution would be to exclude the absolute niscaya view from the text altogether. The fact that that has not happened only demonstrates its authority within the tradition (whether it derives from an individual called 'Kundakunda', or is merely sanctioned by being attributed to him, is not the point). It therefore falls to the commentators to accommodate it as best they can.
The idea that there are at least two implementations of the vyavahāra-niścaya distinction in the Samayasāra - one compatible with anekāntavāda philosophy, the other (the absolute niscaya distinction) not requires further explication. I shall, therefore, now summarize some of the main ways in which the two patterns are juxtaposed in the text, and suggest some models for their development as contrasting, not to say contradictory, doctrines.
41 The specific nature of the dangers for practice and Jaina identity posed by the absolute vyavahāra-niścaya distinction will be discussed below.
42 See, for example, gāthās 11-12, 156, 272.
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