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Introduction
ХХі
solutistic or non-one-sided method). It is difficult to gain the wholly true knowledge of a thing or Reality. Even those who have gained it find it difficult to express it in words in its entirety. Their descriptions or presentations of a thing differ from one another or look somewhat conflicting with one another on account of difference of time, place, circumstances, language, style, etc. This is inevitable.
Apart from the omniscient great personages, if we talk about the ordinary persons alone, there are persons among them also who love and speak truth, but they have only partial knowledge of a thing. They are incompetent to present even their partial knowledge perfectly. Imperfect knowledge is presented imperfectly. So the understanding of even truthloving men sometimes differs. Added to it, the difference of their culture gives rise to even more mutual conflict. Thus, at last all truth-loving persons, omniscient and non-omniscient, automatically present the data or postulates differing from and conflicting with one another; or other persons obtain from them or create through them such data or postulates.
Taking into account this situation, Mahāvīra decided to invent such a method that those having incomplete or partial knowledge of Reality or a thing might not suffer injustice at the hands of others. If others' knowledge, though partial and even conflicting with ours, is true, and similarly our knowledge, though partial and conflicting with others, is true, then we should find out such a method that both may get justice. That method is non-one-sided way or outlook (anekāntadrsti). With the wonderful key
Mahāvīra to view and understand all the conflicting doctrines from their respective standpoints. He answered Buddha's ‘unanswerable' questions from different standpoints. For example, he described the soul as permanent and impermanent, universe as eternal and non-eternal, soul and body as identical and different, from different standpoints. He logically resolved the apparent conflict in the different views. Answers which Mahāvīra gave from different standpoints are found in the original Agamas. They testify to the all-comprehensive intellect of Mahāvīra. It is not that Buddha's was not a synthetic outlook. He too was in a sense the supporter of the doctrine of non-one-sidedness (anekāntavāda) under the guise of the doctrine called Vibhajyavāda (the doctrine which upholds that one can answer rightly certain questions by analysing and breaking up'). When Simha Senapati asked him as to whether it was proper for the people to call him akriyāvādin (non-believer in action), he told him that as he taught the people to perform good and wholesome actions, he was kriyavādin (believer in action) but that as he taught them to refrain from performing evil and unwholesome actions he was akriyāvādin (non-believer in action).
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