Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 186

The Sophisticated Stage 165
can also be eliminated from the non-absolutist point of view, for it holds that the effect may be present and also may be absent in the material cause. For example in the case of a gold-bangle, the gold itself has the capacity to turn into a bangle, and from this viewpoint the effect can be said to be present even before it is actually produced. But since this effect is not there to be seen, because of the absence of necessary accessories, it is absent before its actual production. In the same way the Jain non-absolutist standpoint bridges the gulf between the Buddhist doctrine of conglomeration of atoms and the Nyāya-Vaišeșika doctrine of an altogether novel composition, .
Thus the Jain standpoint attempts in many cases to bridge the gulf between the two extremities. According to the Jain philosophers, the formulation of thoughts and views concerning the nature of an entity is accomplished from various stands determined by a multiplicity of factors. The Jain texts speak of two types of judgements, dravyarthika and paryāyārthika, the former denoting that line of thought which takes substance into account in terms of what is general, common, non-distinct or unitary about things. The latter is the name of that line of thought which takes modes or paryāyas into account. When the two views are sought to be synthesised and as such judgements are formed to give expression of the positive as well as negative aspects of the subject matter in question the result is the complex sevenfold judgement, of which we have already occasion to refer.1
Sanghvi, ASILM, pp. 15-28.