Jain Journal 1966 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 27

OCTOBER, 1966
lessly undergoing infinite modifications. The vastu or the object of experience is thus possessed of infinite aspects. This, however, does not mean that the object of knowledge is necessarily unknowable. The Jainas, as we have hinted above, believe in the possibility of omniscience. Even when knowledge falls short of omniscience, some sort of true knowledge about the things is still possible. It consists in taking up a particular aspect or quality of the thing under observation and finding out in what relations this stands to the thing. It is obvious that these relationships between a thing and one of its modifications or attributes hold good as regards the thing and its other particularities also. True knowledge culminates in the discovery of these fundamental relationships between an object and its quality or mode. The Jaina investigation of the nature of a thing thus concerns itself with a study of these relationships and finds expression in their famous theory of the sapta-bhanga or the seven modes of prediction. Shortly speaking, these seven predications consist in relat the thing to one of its given aspects in no less than seven manners. Thus, the first predication shows how, in some respects, that particular aspect can be positively attributed to the thing. The second predication would indicate how, in other respects, that aspect cannot be predicated of the thing. The third predication would consist in a successive affirmation and negation of that aspect in connection with the thing, in some respects while the fourth bhanga applies simultaneous affirmation and negation of it to the thing, in some respects. In the next mode of predication the fourth and the first forms of predication are combined and the sixth bhanga is similarly a combination of the second and the fourth bhangas. The last form of predication consists in combining the third and the fourth bhangas together. The Jainas point out that samyak jñāna or true knowledge about the object involves a correct application of the above sapta-bhanga or seven modes of predication in respect of it through the methods of the pramāna and the naya.
All knowledge is evidently not right knowledge, just as all faith is evidently not right faith. Save and except the telepathic and the omniscient forms of knowledge, which by their nature cannot be wrong when they are evolved in a self, all other modes of knowledge are liable to be misleading. Thus clairvoyant cognitions, e.g., in many cases where people think that they are having super-ordinary perceptions are often wrong. Where scriptures themselves are wrong and teachers unreliable, the authoritative knowledge, imparted by them is necessarily wrong. Due to the derangements of the sense-organs or of the internal organ of the mind, perceptions become false. On account of a similar derangement of the mental activities, the ideas recalled in memory and concepts formed from them become wrong while defective observation and wrong