Jain Journal 1979 10

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

Page 28

OCTOBER 1979
65
It was technically called Syādvāda. According to this logic (Syādvāda, or the theory of 'May be'), as many as seven modes of predication are possible in any given case. No definite or absolute statement, therefore, can be made about any question. If the question is : 'Is there a soul?' this logic of the Jains would admit of seven answers to it viz, (i) is, (ii) is not, (iii) is and is not, (iv) is unpredicable, (v) is, and is unpredicable, (vi) is not and is unpredicable and (vii) is, is not and is unpredicable. There is a sense in which there is a soul and there is also a sense in which no soul exists; and a third sense is not inconceivable in which we must admit that we cannot describe it; and so on. This is equivalent to saying that knowledge is only probable.
It would, however, be wrong to assume that it only implies agnosticism or metaphysical nihilism. The negative result of such a theory of knowledge is apparently agnosticism, but even out of this the Jains constructed a philosophy. They had a theory of reality also. Their logic was a subtle and disguised protest against the dogmatism of the Vedas, and not intended to deny all reality. The world according to them was not altogether unknowable; only, one must not be cocksure about one's assertions. The world consisted of two eternal, uncreated, coexisting but independent categories viz., the conscious (jiva) and the unconscious (ajīva).
Hermann Jacobi also sees a connection between Jain ontology and epistemology but at a different level. He writes
The Aranyakas and Upanişads had maintained, or were believed to maintain, that Being is one, permanent, without beginning, change, or end. In opposition to this view, the Jains declare that Being is not of a persistent and unalterable nature: Being, they say, 'is joined to production, continuation, and destruction'. This theory they call the theory of the 'Indefiniteness of Being' (anekāntavāda); it comes to this: existing things are permanent only as regards to their substance, but their accidents or qualities originate and perish. To explain: any material thing continues for ever to exist as matter; this matter, however, may assume any shape and quality. Thus, clay as substance may be regarded as permanent, but the form of a jar of clay, or its colour, may come into existence and perish. It is clear that the Brahmanical speculations are concerned with
• R.C. Majumdar, ed., The Age of Imperial Unity (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1953), pp. 423-424,