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Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth
to understand all passions and vice versa. The reference to vibhajyavāda in the Sutrakṛtānga (Matilal p.19) has led scholars like Pt. Dalsukhbhai Malavania (Nyāyāvatāra-vārika-vṛtti, Intr. p. 11-35) to trace the origin of anekantavada to vibhajyavāda which has been claimed by Buddha also (op. cit. p.7).
Dr. Matilal, in the first place, asserts that Pärśvanatha 'did not seem to uphold any philosophical thesis such as the anekāntavāda' and then he shows that the Nāsadiya hymn of the Rgveda and various assertions in the Upanisads such as 'it moves, it moves not' are not the forerunner of anekāntavāda. (op. cit p. 3) He further makes a distinction between vibhajyavāda of Buddha, which was the 'exclusive' middle as it rejected the two extremes, and of Mahāvīra, which was the 'inclusive' middle as it accepted the middle course without rejecting the two extremes (op. cit. p. 18). The distinction, as Dr. Nagin J. Shah in his foreword to the work states, is interesting. Dr. Matilal, however, is clear that 'the Buddha was an ekāntavādin' (op. cit. p. 18). In such a situation, it is yet to be decided by the scholars, if it would be proper to trace the origin of anekantavāda to the vibhajyavada of Buddhism particularly when Dr. Matilal himself is against accepting the statements of Nāsadīya hymn and the Upanisads as forerunners of anekānta on the ground that 'the anekanta doctrine will be misunderstood if merely the joint assertation of contradictory predicates about an identical subject be itself taken to be a vindication of anekanta doctrine.' (op. cit. p. 3) In the third Chapter of his work, Jaina Nyāya kā Vikāsa, Muni Nathamal, has enumerated as many as eight pillars on which the edifice of anekānta stands. The first of them is the coexistence and invariable concommitance of the universal and the particular. The Buddhist will, however, accept only the particular. The second is the invariable concommitance of the permanence and transitoriness. The Buddhist will, here again, accept only the transitoriness. How can we, then, harp upon the theme of deriving anekānta of Jainism from the vibhajyavāda of Buddhism? And in case we do so, where lies the fault in taking back the origin of anekanta to the Vedic literature, for, as Dr. Mookerjee has pointed out, it must not be forgotten that Vedanta is frankly realistic in its logic and epistemology. And the logical evaluation of phenomenal reality as a mass of irrational surds and contradictions by Vedānta
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