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JAINA ONTOLOGY
conducted within an extremely neat framework. Little wonder this framework became model for subsequent generations of Jaina philosophers - of philosophers whose grasp of problems was deeper than Samantabhadra's own.
Another aspect of Samantabhadra's performance also deserves notice. He apparently attaches ut most importance to the Saptabhangi doctrine and in fact makes it the starting point of his investigation. The form in which he presents the doctrine first appears in Aptamimāṁsā and is different from that in which it appears in Siddhasena's Sanmati. Attention has already been drawn towards this circumstance and the fact is not much important. What is noteworthy is Samantabhadra's attributing the name 'naya' to each of the seven alternative propositions of this Saptabhangt doctrine. Similarly noteworthy is his attributing the name "Syadvada' to the totality of these propositions. Samantabhadra submits that one difference between the omniscient person's cognition on the one hand and Syāduada and Naya on the other is that the former comprehends everything simultaneously the latter do so successively (v. 101). Similarly, he submits that even if both Syādvada and the omniscient person's cognition comprehend eveything the former is a case of mediate cognition, the latter that of immediate cognition (v. 105). All this is indicative of certain undercurrents of the Jaina thought of the period. That naya is a partial expression of truth was a comparatively old idea, but by naya were to be undersood the seven nayas naigama, sangraha etc. or the two nayas dravyāstika, paryāyāstika or the two nayas vyayahāra, niscaya; on the other hand, the Saptabhangi doctrine had come to the fore-front in comparatively recent times and there were no tradition of associating with it the name 'naya'. Again, Syadvāda could be treated as a synonym for Anekāntavāda and the mere fact that the constituent propositions of the Saptabhangi doctrine used the word 'syāt was no sufficient ground for identifying Syadvāda with this doctrine. It was perhaps thought that since the Saptabhangi doctrine enables us to express the whole of truth and since Syadvada (=Anekāntavada) represents the whole of the truth the Sabtabhangi doctrine (rather the various possible Saptabhangi schemes taken in their totality) should be treated as the same thing as Syadvada. Then a distinction was made between the immediate knowledge of the whole truth which an omniscient person possesses and the various Sa ptabhangt schemes through which this knowledge is given expression to, Using these Saptabhangt schemes one after another and using the constituent propositions of one Saptabhangt scheme one after another even an ordinary mortal can gain a knowledge of the whole of truth. Hence it was declared that an omniscient person knows the whole of truth immediately and simultaneously while an ordinary mortal knows it mediately and successively. Lastly, there seems to have developed a tradition of identifying pramäna whith the whole of truth and naya with a part of it. And the present part of
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