Introduction to Jainism and its Culture

Author(s): Balbhadra Jain
Publisher: Kundkund Gyanpith Indore

Page 69

called Hereclition. This one believed that the world was ever changing. Assimilating these two beliefs philosophers like Empedocles, Atomists, and Anaxagoras have accepted relative transformation while believing in the permanence of substances."
Hegel, the German philosopher, postulates that generation of antithesis is the basis of the world. While describing a thing we should certainly include the apparent reality but at the same time we should show how the contrasting attributes could be assimilated.'
Bradley believes that everything is important as well as insignificant in comparison to another thing. Every thought has truth within, no matter how false it is. Each existent thing is real no matter how insignificant it is.
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There are many philosophers who have accepted contrasting qualities in substance. They have accepted various forms of a substance as relative and no substance as absolute. Therefore, although both Indian and Western philosophers have accepted the basic theory of Syadvāda, the credit of installing it on the pedestal of an independent philosophical principle goes to Jain philosophy alone.
References
1. Aṣṭa Sahasrī, p. 286; Aṣṭaśatī, p. 286; Samayavyākhyā of Pañcāstikaya by Amṛitcandrācārya; Stotra by Swāmī Samantabhadra.
2. These verses could be compared with similar verses from Devāgama Stotra by Acharya Samanta Bhadra who predates Kumāril Bhatt by centuries.
3. Rgveda, 10/129/1
4. Iśāvāsya, 5
5. Praśnopaniṣada, 2.5
6. Thilly; History of Philosophy, p. 32
7. Ibid, P.
467 8. Appearance and Reality, p. 482
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