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The Dialectic of Sevenfold Predication
157
would arise if both the predicates were to relate to the self-same thing, that is to say, if permanence and impermanence were affirmed in respect of the substance or of the modes in the same reference. But that is not the case and so the propositions are not incompatible. But a real difficulty occurs if the second interpretation is followed. The jar is a unit and cannot be both permanent and impermanent in the contemplated sense. The jar is permanent' means 'the jar is identical with the permanent' and the jar is impermanent' means "the jar is different from the permanent.' The jar, which is permanent, cannot have 'difference' from 'permanent', since difference is an attribute which subsists in the whole of a real. It is not a part-characteristic like 'conjunction' (samyoga) or attributes derived from conjunction, red or blue. Ajar may be red and not-red, red in one part and non-red in another part. These attributes are called part-characteristics, since the locus of one is not the locus of the other (a vyāpyavrtti). But difference is not a part-characteristic, as it belongs to the subject as a whole. Difference or identity, on the other hand, are whole-characteristics (vyāpyavstti). If 'A' is different from 'B' it can be so if 'A' as a whole would be different, in other words, if it has an identity unshared by 'B' in any aspect.
The Jaina however does not believe in whole-characteristics at all and the denial of whole-characteristics is only a corollary of the dictum that the positive is the correlate of the negative.1
Difference' would not be a determinate attribute, if it did not negate its opposite. An indeterminate attribute is only a contradiction in terms. The Jaina asserts that difference being a determinate characteristic must be concomitant with its opposite, otherwise it would cease to be an attribute at all. Such being the case, difference and identity, so far as they are determinate characteristics, must be co-existent in the same substratum, and this knocks out the Naiyāyika's differentiation between wholecharacteristic and part-characteristic and the difficulty based upon it. The hollowness of the Naiyāyika's contention can be demonstrated further by the examination of a concrete instance.
pratişedhyenā 'vinābhāvy ekadharmiņi AMI, Chap. I,
1. astitvam verse 17.
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