Book Title: Jaina Philosophy of Non Absolutism
Author(s): Satkari Mookerjee, S N Dasgupta
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

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Page 280
________________ 258 The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism has no medium of manifestation outside the same. As has been remarked before it is only an individual which can reveal a universal. The ultimate nature of things is to be accepted on the evidence of experience exactly in the way in which it manifests itself. It will be over-stepping the limits of our jurisdiction to expect things to behave according to our preference. That the universal is perceived distinctly from the individual is not open to question. Its numerical difference from the individuals is attested by the fact that it is felt as different from the individuals in which it was previously perceived when it is perceived in a new individual. And even when it is perceived in a new individual, it is felt as distinct from the individual and as related to it. It is never felt as identical with the individual. The possibility of its identity with individuals would on the contrary make the universal a gratuitous assumption, for which we have not found the slightest warrant. As regards the charge of mutually contradictory characteristics that the universal does not exist either in its entirety or in its partial extension in the particulars the Naiyayika reads in it the fallacy of petitio principii. The universal does not admit of degrees of dimension. So the question of extension is irrelevant. It exists in its own nature, which is non-dimensional. In this respect it is rather on a par with spiritual entities to which the question of dimension is entirely repugnant. Cow or The difficulty of relation to unborn individuals is also a figment of Dharmakirti's imagination. The Naiyayika does not hold that a universal moves forward from one individual to another nor that it is born with the individual. It is existent all the while and even before the birth of the individual and after its destruction. It cannot be contended that its existence in space or in time should make the latter understood as a a horse just as the existence of a cow-universal in an individual makes the latter understood as a cow. The answer is that it is not merely the existence of the universal but rather its inherence that makes the individual understood as a cow. The universal does not inhere in space or in time and so the question of the latter behaving like a cow or a horse does not arise. This also disposes of the further objection of the Buddhist that the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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