Jain Journal 2000 07

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

Page 21

SYĀDVĀDA IN THE VIEW OF THREE
MODERN SCIENTISTS
RAMKRISHNA BHATTACHARYA In the pre-Christian era, the Jain logicians of India developed a system of logic of their own. Bhadrabāhu (433-357 B.C.) first mentions it in a commentary. The doctrine thus may be even older. In fact, Sañjaya Belatthipuţta (also called Sañcaya Belaţthaputta), a contemporary of the Buddha (623-544 B.C.) is also said to have held this view. It is called vikkhepavāda (viksepavāda in Sanskrit, 'the doctrine of evasion or equivocation') in the Pali sūtra-s. 2 It differs not only from the western (Aristotelian) logic but also from the Indian Nyāya system. Prashanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the foremost statistician of modern India first drew the attention of the scientists to the importance of this system of logic in the study of probability in 1953.3 Instead of declaring either 'yes' or 'no', and thus confining itself to two alternatives, this system speaks in terms of “May be, it is", "May be it is not", etc. The Sanskrit word syāt means "may be". Hence this doctrine is called syādvāda (syāt + vāda), "the doctrine of may be".
After Mahalanobis, J.B.S. Haldane and D.S. Kothari, two eminent scientists also wrote on the applicability of syāduāda in the fields of mathematics, zoology and physics. In other words, the potential of this system of logic can be explored in many areas where there is an in-built uncertainty and definite conclusions are hard to arrive at. So it will be rewarding to get acquainted with syādvāda.
Syādvāda asserts that there are altogether seven ways of describing a phenomenon:
1. Syād asti May be, it is 2. Syād nāsti, May be, it is not
1.
2.
3.
For details, see Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana, A History of Indian Logic, Calcutta : Calcutta University, 1921, pp. 167-71. Dharmananda Kosambi, Bhagavān Buddha (Bengali Trans.), New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1980, p. 161. P.C. Mahalanobis, The Foundations of Statistics', Dialectica, Vol. 8 No. 2, 15 June 1954, pp. 95-111. Reprinted in Sankhyā, Vol. 18, Parts 1 and 2, 1957, pp. 183-194. J.B.S. Haldane, The Syādvāda System of Prediction', Sankhyā, Vol. 18, Parts 1 and 2, 1957, pp. 195-200; D.S Kothari, The Complementarity Principle and Eastern Philosophy in : Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, ed. A.P. French and P.J. Kennedy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 325-331.