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Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth
about the anekānta doctrine there is no vagueness. It is not a philosophy of indefiniteness or indetermination or dubiety or scepticism or agnosticism. It is 'the theory that every (predication or) judgment is Relative' or 'the doctrine of sevenfold (or the seven forms) of conditional predication'. For, every ordinary judgment passed by imperfect human minds holds good only of the particular aspect of the entity or object judged and the point of view from which the judgment is passed. Every judgment relates to a particular context whose constituents or conditions are left unmentioned, partly because they are obvious and partly because they are too many to be enumerated exhaustively. So for the sake of precision or accuracy it is good to qualify the judgment or predication clearly by the word 'syat ('somehow') which is paraphrased as 'kathañcit' ('somehow'). The particle 'syäť' in syadvāda "is generally treated by commentators as an indeclinable noun or adjective connoting indefinite possibility".4 This particle is used by the Jain logicians in a very special sense: "in some respect" or 'from a certain point of view', or 'under a certain condition'. Thus the particle 'syať' in a sentence qualifies the acceptance or rejection "15 It of the proposition or predication expressed by the sentence. indicates the anekanta nature of a predication or proposition. Its use indicates the limitation of the judgment passed and the possibility of other alternative judgments from other points of view. The doctrine of syādvada "denies all absolute propositions, such as, something is absolutely nitya (eternal) or anitya (non-eternal or evanescent), every proposition, according to the Jain doctrine, being only relatively true, i.e., true from a certain point of view, and untrue from a different point of view. It is thus a doctrine of Relativity of Truth,..., and should not be confounded with any form of Scepticism or Agnosticism, ancient or modern."6
The doctrine of syadvada is also known as saptabhangi (seven-fold Predication, the Seven Forms of Judgment, The Theory of Conditional
4. Syadvadamañjarī (edited by A.B. Dhruva) Notes, p.32.
5. Matilal B.K. The Central Philosophy of Jainism (Anekāntavāda), L.D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad-380009, p.53.
6. Syadvadamañjarī, Notes (by A.B. Dhruva) p.32.
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