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The Dialectic of Sevenfold Predication
173 made to see the drawbacks in our position by the criticism of the opponent.
To return to our problem, the Jaina is emphatic that the charge of contradiction against the co-presence of being and non-being in a real is a figment of a priori logic; and his dismissal of this fundamental accusation entails the collapse of all other charges, which are consequential upon the truth of contradiction. As regards the charge of regressus ad infinitum, it has been disposed of before. It will suffice to say that a real is a manifold of infinite plurality of attributes, and the infinity of attributes, which is the consequence of the charge, is true and authenticated by logic. So the charge does not invalidate the Jaina position.
We have finished our survey of the sevenfold predication and we have given serious thought to its implications and the criticism thereof. The dialectic of sevenfold predication is not easy to understand. It is not surprising that the doctrine has been misunderstood even in India. The critics of Jaina nonabsolutism have not shown a critical grasp of this abstruse theory and their criticism has been rather shallow and superficial. It cannot be expected that the idealist logician will accept the logical theory of the Jaina realist. But the pity is that its implications were not sought to be understood even by those schools of thinkers who had much in common with the Jaina. The affinities of Jaina thought with other schools of thought are pronounced and momentous. Barring the Monists of Sankara's school and the Buddhist Nihilist (sünyavādin), almost all schools of Indian philosophy, particularly those who have realistic leanings, have consciously or unconsciously followed the logic that is advocated by the Jaina. We do not propose to enter into the tangled problem of chronological priority and the consequent problem of influence of one school upon the other. It must be admitted that the systematization of Jaina philosophical thought and logic is rather a later phenomenon. We are concerned with the Masters of Jaina thought, who, as a matter of historical fact, flourished after Dignāga and Dharmakirti. This has been a source of advantage to Jaina thought. It had the opportunity to study afresh the implications of the philosophy of non-absolutism called anekāntavāda, which seems to date back
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