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JAIN JOURNAL
Vol. XXXIII
No. 1 July
1998
CONTRIBUTION OF THE JAINA LOGICIANS TO INDIAN EPISTEMOLOGY*
DR DHARM CHAND JAIN
PART-I
A BRIEF SURVEY OF LITERARY CONTRIBUTION Before I enter into the problem, I would like to say first of all that the term 'epistemology encompasses two dimensions of philosophy, i.e. Jñāna-mimāmsā and Pramāņa-mimāmsā. To some extent, both the dimensions are intermingled. Pramana is not absolutely different from knowledge or congnition. Particularly in Jaina tradition pramāna is always accepted as a kind of congnition. Hence all the descriptions made in Jaina canons regarding knowledge come under the scope of pramāņa. When we discuss pramāņa, we have to resort to the theory of knowledge. There is only one difference in pramāna and right knowledge (samyag-jñāna) that the right knowledge depends on right view (samyag-darsana), but pramana does not require any such view. Pramana is a kind of knowledge which is devoid of doubt (samsaya), illusion (viparyaya) and indetermination (anadhya-vasāya). In Jaina philosophy pramāṇa has been accepted as a definitive cognition of knowable thing and knowledge itself. The Jaina logicians are almost unanimous on this characteristic of pramāņa. Although at the early time of Tattvārthasūtra, there was no difference between pramana and right knowledge, that is why, Umāsvāti, the author of Tattvārthasūtra had clearly divided five types of knowledge into two kinds of pramāna without mentioning any difference between right knowledge and pramāņa. He kept matijñāna (sensuous knowledge) and śrutajñāna (scriptural or verbal knowledge, succeeding matijñāna) under the category of paroksa pramāņa (indirect pramāna) and the other three
of knowledge i.e. avadhiñana (visual intuition), manahparyāyaiñāna (intuition of mental modes) and kevalajñāna (pure and perfect knowledge) had been placed in the category of pratyakṣa pramāņa
*
This is a Mahāsatī Tārābai Svāmī lecture given by the author at Chennai.
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