Jain Shwetambar Conference Herald 1916 Book 12

Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference

Page 212

૩૬૮
શ્રી જૈન શ્વે. કા. હેરલ્ડ.
thereby that it exists as a jar but it does not exsit somehow, if we mean thereby that it exists as a cloth or the like.
·
The purpose of these seeming truisms is to guard against the assumption made by the Vedantins that Being is one without a second, the same in all things. Thus we have the correlative predicates 'is' (ast) and is not' (nasti). A third predicate inexpressible' (avaktunya); for existent and nonexistent (sat and asat) belong to the same thing at the same time, and such a coexistence of mutually contradictory attri butes cannot be expressed by any word in the language. These three predicates variously combined make up the seven propositions or saptabhangas of the Syadvada. I shall not ab ise your patience by discussing this doctrine at length; it is enough to have shown that it is an outcome of the theory of indefiniteness of Being (anekantavada), and to have reminded you that the Jainas believe the Syadvada to be the key to the solution of all metaphysical questions.
The doctrine of the Nayas which I mentioned before is, as it were, the logical complement to the Syadvada. The nayas are ways of expressing the nature of things; all the se ways of judgement are, according to the Jainas, one-sided, and they contain but a part of the truth. There are seven. nayas, four referring to concepts, and three to words. The reason for this variety is that Being is not simple, as the Vedantins believe, but is of a complicated nature; therefore, every statement and every denotation of a thing is necessarily incomplete and one-sided and if we follow one way only of expression or of viewing things, we needs must go astray.
There is nothing in all this which sounds deeply speculative; on the contrary, the Jain theory of Being seems to be a vindication of common-sense against the paradoxical speculations of the Upanishads. It is also, but not primarily, directed against the Buddhistic tenet of the transitoriness of all that exists, We cannot, however, say that it expressly