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Jainism As Metaphilosophy
comprehensively cover all the major metaphysical problems raised by philosophers the world over. If the various schools of Indian philosophy are envisaged as offering a comprehensive coverage of these major problems of metaphysics, and if the Jaina philosophers are seen as reacting critically to these various schools, it would appear that in and through their Nayavāda they have indicated the need for criticism in philosophy.
The import of such a thcory is explicitly stated by one of the Jaina philosophers when he observes:
All the standpoints (nayas) are valid from their respective angles - but if they are taken to be refulations, each of the other, they are wrong. But onc who has comprehended the ‘non-onç-sided' nature of reality never
considers a particular view absolutely wrong.-
Absolute refutations as much as absolute allirmations are unacceptable and hence are criticised. This idea emerges clearly from the fact that the focus of concern is shisted from the traditional seven-fold nayas to the basic division into the dravyāstikanaya (The Substance point of vicw) and the paryāyāstikanaya (The Modal Vicwpoint). This is also in keeping with the dominant trend of thought in Jainism, víz. defining Reality as possessed of origination, destruction and permanence. Such a definition of Reality from the Jaina side can well be sccn as its critical response to the Brahmanical as well as thc Buddhistic views. As against the Brahmanic portrayal of Reality as never-changing and as against the anti-thesis propogated by the Buddhists, viz. that Reality is cver-changing, the Jaina philosophers maintained that Rcality is not merely permanent but it is cqually well ever-changing. In this connection a Jaina scholar obscrves:
It was an old Jaina poisition that dharma, adharma, akāśa, souls and atoms are so many permanent substances but it was always conceded that all thesc substances possess properties that might come and go. (As for the composite physical substances, thc position was that their constituent atoms are permanent cven if thcy themselves must originate and perish.) It was in this background that onc had to understand the... contcntion that an atom, a soul (and) a naraka was permanent from the standpoint of dravya and transient from that of
paryāya or bhāva. 30 The dravyanaya and paryāyanaya were indicated carlicr on in our
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