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criticism does not go far beyond saying that the Jainas contradict themselves. All later Vedāntis have followed this model refutation of Jainism, and so we find the same recur with Madhva and Jayatirtha. But syādvāda is the natural outcome of the realistic ontology of Jainism, which recognizes the unsublatable existence of the external material world and at the same time refuses to reduce mental and spiritual phenomena to the level of the material. Thus in the case of, e.g., universals, the Jainas accept the existence of many qualities simultaneously in a given object, which are different from the object in question and at the same time identical with it.
In Dvaita, the problem of the universals was solved by means of the concept of viseşa or 'distinction'. This concept first appears in a theological discussion concerning the viśvarūpa of Vişņu, viz, whether he is identical with the višvarūpa or different from it.20 Madhva quotes an earlier text, ascribed to Vyāsa, which says that through višeşa Vişnu can have one and many forms at the same time. Višesa is described as vastusvarūpa, the essence of a thing, and is self-supporting. In his commentary, Jayatirtha points out how the Nyāya solution leads to infinite regress, 21 as the Jainas have said earlier. There is nothing without viseșa and it is only due to višeşa that any thing can exist at all. There is no fallacy involved here, says the text, “because we experience oneness and also experience višeşa" : we know it through our direct experience of the oneness of the distinction and what is distinguished by it. Jayatirth calls višeşa the padārtha-sakti, 29 the 'power of the object' which acts as the representative or substitute of difference. In this arguing in favour of the notion of the one which is at the same time many, of the substance which is one with its qualities and yet different, of differences which exist only in a certain, qualified sense, we see something which is basically the same as syādvāda, although the Dvaitis have further elaborated the doctrine with additional terminology.
As I have mentioned earlier, Dvaita accepts the svatah-prāmānya of knowledge, meaning that any piece of knowledge is to be considered truthful until and unless proven untrue. Truthfulness is known through the sākşin or witness, the ultimate pramāņa. This is an aspect of the
20 D. Prahladachar (ed.), Srimadanandatirthagavat padaviracitah Gitatat parva
nirnayah, Bangalore : Purna prajna Vidyapitha, 1987, p. 208. 21 Jayatirtha's Nyayadipika on the Gitatat paryair naya, p. 210. 22 P. Nagaraja Rao (ed., tr.), Vadavali by Jayatirtha, Adyar : The Adyar Library,
1943, 471, p. 134.
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