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Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth I wish to suggest a seven-plank frame for experience and relate them to the seven planks of saptabhangi epistemology. Epistemology being a theory of knowledge has to be based on universal experience. I am placing these rough ideas as they occurred to me before scholars and it is for you to decide whether such an approach is also possible.
I have been an humble student of Vedānta. Students of Vedānta are aware that Adhyāsa is the bed rock of Advaita Vedānta and it is precisely for this reason that Sankarācārya opened his monumental Brahmasūtrabhāsya with his famous thesis of Adhyāsa, though it has no apparent bearing on the first sūtra of Brahmasūtra. Now, taking different forms of knowledge like pramā, bhrama, samsaya and the vikalpa of the Yoga school into account, I wish to suggest a seven-plank frame for empirical experience and demonstrate the parallelism between the seven types of experience and the seven planks of the Jaina theory of saptabhangi epistemology.
The seven types of experience, I have in mind, and their correlation or correspondence with the seven planks of the saptabhangi frame may be put down as follows. For the sake of showing the correspondence with the saptabhangi-naya, I am following the conventional order of saptabhangi itself. 1. Pramā or valid experience. This projects the sattva aspect of a
thing. Practically all our common everyday experiences will fall under this category, the most representative example being, ayam
ghataḥ 2. Vikalpa experience, with no substantial substratum, resting only
on words. This projects the asattva aspect, the classical examples being sašaśặnga and vandhya-putra. Sentences like agninā siñcati, which cannot communicate on account of the absence of yogyatā, may also perhaps be considered under this category. Samsaya or doubt, which projects sattva and asattva of a thing in a sequence (kramārpita). The familiar example will be sthānur
vā puruṣo vā. 4. Bhrama or mithyājñāna of the ordinary type, where the object
experienced defies description in terms of existence or nonexistence (sattvāsattuābhyām anirvacanīya), which corresponds to
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