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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
Here the non-cow is felt as much as the cow the negative and the positive factor being present alike".1 Udayana seems to assent to the position asserted by Jñanaśrī, but the positive character conceded by the Buddhist makes a material difference which Udayana will show to be incompatible with the Buddhist denial of objective universals. But Udayana has all along denied that negation is felt as an element in a concept and this endorsement of the Buddhist position seems to be a makebelieve. Sankara Miśra takes Udayana's words at their face value and thinks that negation of the opposite is felt as an element in a determinate concept. But the other commentators, particularly Bhagiratha Thakkura and Raghunatha Širomani are decidedly of opinion that negation of the opposite is only a deduction from the positive concept and is understood at a subsequent stage.
And even if it is allowed that negation of the opposite is a factor of the meaning of a word, this negation cannot be understood without reference to a positive universal. This will be obvious from an analysis of the concept 'not-not-cow'. 'Not-cow', unless it be nonsense, must mean all that is different from cow. But one individual cow is different from another individual cow and if this difference of individuality be made the connotation, the word not-cow would denote not only horses, buffaloes and so on, but also other individual cows. In order to avoid this contingency it must be admitted that not-cow denotes all things that are different from each and every cow. But the number of cows being unlimited it is not humanly possible to know that a horse or a buffalo differs from an unknown cow. So the negation of cow must be admitted to refer to the cow-universal and not to the infinite number of cows as individuals. Even an ordinary assertion of negation is possible only because the negated object is never felt as an individual, but as a fact possessed of the universal that constitutes its essence. When we say 'there is no cow here', we mean not the absence of this or that individual cow, but of cows as such. To be explicit, we mean that all cows are absent from this place. How is this knowledge of all individual cows, past, present, future, near or remote,
1. The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, p. 133.
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