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common life is a laborious process in which it grows gradually in time by gathering and connecting isolated facts and testing and correcting itself is due to the fact that the intuitive power of the soul is freed from obscuring factors only through the gradual and occasional subsidence of Karman It has to be remembered that while the truth of knowledge depends on its correspondence with reality i e, 'utpattau paratah prāmānyam', the assurance of truth or verification is both in terms of its innate character as well as confirmation received from other knowledge 42 Where experience is repeatable or where knolwedge arises from rational deduction, knowledge appears as self-validating while in the case of new observations or doubt in reasoning, knowledge requires to be further validated by repeated observation or reasoning by way of a reductio ad absurdum
What enabled the Jaina philosophers to pick their way through the maze of rival views without prejudice was their own distinctive philosophical ethos in terms of a dialectical outlook on both knowledge and reality This profound and essential direction of Jaina thought is also its most ancient and original element The Buddhists and, following them in later times, the Advaita Vedāntists had formulated a negative dialectic which discovers contradictions in conceptual knowledge and hence regards its truth as merely pragmatic Reality becomes on this view essentially unknowable and indescribable As has been observed“Catuskoti-vinırmuktam tattvam Madhyamikā jaguh" Jaina dialectic on the other hand is positive rather than negative It discovers contradiction to be due to the adoption of partial and dogmatic points of view and reconciles them with the logic of Syādvāda It discovers the infinite richness of reality, 'ananta-dharmātmakam vastu' and allows an infinite progression of knowledge where common sense as well as conceptual rigour cooperate rather than behave as mutual enemies 43
Jaina Syādvāda was criticized by other schools as defying the law of contradiction 'Sankarācārya thus objects against the Jaina that if one asserts existence one cannot assert its contra
