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JAINA ONTOLOGY
has been able to express himself in one stretch on some of the most fundamental philosophical views centring around the admission or otherwise of two contradictory features, e. g. existence-and-non-existence, one. ness-and-separateness, permanence-and-transience, 'identity between cause and effect, substance and properties, parts and whole' and difference between cause and effect, substance and properties, parts and whole'. But even in his other writings he loses no opportunity to criticise various one-sided ontological positions and defend the corresponding Jaina positions. Taken together these discussions of Akalanka constitute the first most comprehensive and mature vindication of Anekantavāda; for in them he has taken into consideration the rival positions as actually maintained in the contemporary writings of various non-Jaina schools, particularly Buddhist. And by his time these schools — particularly the Buddhist – had reached almost the acme of perfection. Akalarka was particularly bitter against the Buddhist doctrine of Kșanikavāda because in his eyes it was a monumental case of one-sided emphasis on transience at the cost of permanence. Similarly, he was critical of the Buddhist contention that no two reals share any feature in common. Then there were certain minor points of dispute - e. g. the Buddhist instance that a substance is nothing apart from its properties, a whole nothing apart from its parts.23 Of course, on the question of the universal and particulars, the substance and properties, the whole and parts Akalanka had to argue not only against the Buddhist one-sidedness but also against its Nyāya-Vaiseșikas opposite - for the Nyāya-Vaišeşikas would submit that a universal is an entity absolutely independent of the particular falling under it, a substance an entity absolutely independent of the properties characterising it, a whole an entity absolutely independent of the parts constituting it.28 As for Sankhya Akalanka felt that it suffered from both one-sided emphasis on permanence and one-sided emphasis on transience inasmuch it on the one hand maintained that the transformations of Prakyti are transitory and on the other that an effect is always present there that is, it is present there even before and after it appears to be present there) 34. On the other hand the doctrine of Brahma which, logically speaking, is the polar opposite of the Buddhist doctrine of Kșanikavāda does not much engage Akalanka's attention even if he at times refers to it in the passingas, a circumstance that suggests that the doctrine of Brahma was not yet the mighty force it later on became. As for Akalanka's mode of demonstrating his anekāntavadı theses he would usually argue either that perception reveals a thing to be a 'unity of opposites' or that inference does so; 38 (hence the usual occurrence of such a demonstration either in connection with the treatment of perception or in connection with the treatment of inference). Thus in hundred and one ways does Akalanka say that what we see all around us is neither change-without-permanence nor permanence-without-change 7
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