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Nyāya Criticism of Anekānta
109 the viewpoint of its modifications (i.e. paryāyas, pleasure, pain etc.), it should be taken in the secondary sense only.56
Thus we have seen that Bhāsarvajña, a revolutionary Naiyāyika (950 A.D.), has very boldly and logically criticised the anekānta. For presenting the prima facie view in the Nyāyabhūṣaṇa, he has almost verbatim taken passages from the standard and authoritative works of Jaina philosophy, viz. Samantabhadra's Devāgama alias Aptamīmāmsă and Akalanka's Tattvārthavārtika on Umāsvati's Tattvārthasūtra (1.6).
Bhāsarvajña's criticism of anekānta could be recapitulated as follows: 1. The principle of ekānta (i.e. absolute determination) alone can
exhort a man to do an activity. That person alone, who is sure that whatever effort he would make he would infallibly get the
result of that effort, will engage himself in activity. 2. The faults of both the sides ātman is either taken to be eternal
or non-eternal are bound to arise if anekānta is admitted. 3. In fact, production and destruction take place only in respect
of pleasure, pain etc. and not in regard to ätman. Paryāyas are
absolutely different from the underlying substance. 4. The famous instance of a bracelet etc. cannot prove that one
and the same thing is eternal and non-eternal both. 5. In order to discriminate between an emancipated soul and the
souls of donkey etc., between eatables and non-eatables, one has
to admit the principle of ekānta. 6. A thing can never be of twofold nature in the primary sense.
A thing itself can never be the negation of its own. 7. The description of negation as mutual one or as absolute one
depends upon the presupposition in the mind, of its counterpositive. Hence the statement that a pot is not a cloth
does not prove that the pot is of twofold nature. 8. If the twofold nature of a thing is somehow granted, then it should
be taken in the secondary sense. 9. The anekānta being admitted, a person would be forcibly drawn
to this side and that side and be put in a strange pitiable condition.
56. Ibid, p.560.
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