Jain Journal 1968 10

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

Page 36

OCTOBER, 1968
bhavastadatatsvabhāvah" and tries to establish equality between curd and camel. Hence he questions why one who intends to eat curd, does not go to eat a camel in place of curd, since according to Jainism, both have the universal character.13
81
Akalanka tries to disarm critics like Dharmakirti by pointing out the definition of samanya and visesa. Vadiraja, a commentator of Akalanka explains that the similar transformation of a thing into its modes (sadrasapariņāmo hi sāmānyam) is called samanya.14 According to this definition, the modes of curd and camel are not similar they are really completely different, as well as similar. How is it then possible that there elements are mixed?
Another argument used for the refutation of the Buddhist standpoint is that the identity is only among the modes of curd, as hard, harder, hardest, etc., but they have not any sort of relation with the modes of camel. Hence, they can never be mixed with each other. Vadiraja refers here to a traditional fiction that Dharmakirti proved himself as a viduşaka (jester) because he did not possess a good knowledge of the opponents' theory.15
Akalanka again criticises the view of Dharmakirti saying that if the argument that "the atoms of curd and camel may have been mixed sometimes before and the atoms of curd have still the capacity to be transfered into the modes of camel" is to be raised, it would not be advisable. For the past and the future modes of an entity are different, and all transactions and transformations run according to present modes. The curd is for the purpose of eating, while the camel is for riding. The words for them are also completely different from each other. The word "curd" can be applied only to curd, not camel. It is the same case with the word "camel" too.
Akalanka further points out that if in relation to past modes, the unity between curd and camel is derived, then Sugata (the Buddha) was mrga (deer) in his previous birth and the same mrga became Sugata.
13 tatra mithyottaram jatih yatha' nekantavidvisam
dadhyustraderabhedatvaprasangadekacodanam-Nyaya-viniscaya. 2.203.
14 NVV. vol. ii. p. 233.
15 purvapaksamavijnanaya dusako'pi vidusakah, iti prasiddhah, NVV, vol. ii, p. 233. At another place Dharmakirti is called "kathamunmatto" (NVV. p. 17).