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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
syādvāda or anekāntavāda formulated by the Jaina philosophy.
SYĀDVĀDA OR ANEKĀNTAVĀDA
(THEORY OF MANY-SIDEDNESS) The method of viewing or explaining a thing from different standpoints is syāduāda. It is also called anekāntavāda. The method of honestly accepting and reconciling the apparently contradictory attributes in a thing from different standpoints is called syadvada or anekāntavāda. In a man, we accept seemingly contradictory attributes--that is, we call him father and son, uncle and nephew, son-in-law and father-in-law, etc.,because they are reconcilable from different standpoints of different relations which he holds with different persons. Similarly, one accepts apparently opposite attributes, viz., permanence and impermanence, etc., in a thing, say a pot, because one reconciles them with one another from
into indriya-pratyakșa and noindriya-pratyakşa, presented in Anuyogadvārasutra and Nandisutra, that Jinabhadragani Kşamāśramana in his Viseșāvasyaka-bhäsya (gäthä 95) for the first time gave the name 'sāṁvyavahārika pratyakşa' to sensory perception (indriya pratyaksa) which is what people (and even logicians) understand by pratyakşa. By doing so, he eliminated for the first time, the discrepancy-pointed out by the non-Jaina logicians-vitiating the twofold classification of pratyaksa into indriya-pratyakşa and noindriya-pratyakşa. The discrepancy was as follows. When the Jaina system calls only that knowledge pratyakṣa which is born of akşa (i.e., ātmā = soul) alone, it becomes self-contradictory to call sensory perception pratyakșa (for sense-perception is not born of soul alone). Thus, Jinabhadra achieved two things. First, he removed discrepancy that was there in the previous Sūtra works and secondly he gave due respect to the popular view. After Jinabhadra, Akalankadeva made even more firm the twofold classification of pratyakşa-pramāna. Moreover, he showed his intellectual acumen in fixing the number of the sub-species of parokșa-pramāna and in defining each of them. He maintained that the sub-species of paroksa-pramana are five only and they are (1) anumāna (inference), (2) pratyabhijñā (recognition), (3) smarana (memory), (4) tarka (cogitation or hypothetical reasoning) and (5) agama (verbal testimony). The result was that all post-Akalanka Jaina logicians-Digambara as well as Svetāmbara--followed this classification made by Akalanka, and composed more or less lengthy texts basing themselves on Akalanka's very words (or their equivalents) and developing his very idea in this or that direction. Siddhasena Diväkara's Nyāyāvatāra is the product of that time when the academic atmosphere had started gathering stronger and stronger influence of logic and logical discussions. The term 'nyaya' occurring in the title 'Nyāyāvatāra' seems to be primarily suggestive of the meaning of anumāna (inference), because in this tiny treatise of 32 couplets too much space is devoted to the treatment of inference. Nyāyāvatāra treats of three pramānas, viz., perception, inference and verbal testimony.
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