Mahaviras Word

Author(s): Walther Shubring
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 51

Mahāvira's Words by Walther Schubring
pleted fact, something the opponents denied (8, 7).
To this repeated appearance of the tenet one may add that putting together the beginning and conclusion of a new birth in 12, 8 is expressly traced back to Mahāvīra's utterance: samaņe bhagavam Mahāvīre vägarei: uvavajjamāne uvavanne tti vattavvam siyā. These words contain at the same time the other characteristic sign of the Mahāvirian mode of expression which should be mentioned here: the use of syāt. The word siyā/siya can function in an adverbial sense which, when employed twice, can express “partly ... partly", as well as in the usual verbal sense. The utterance thereby contains the indefinite colouring the inventor of the doctrine of standpoints wishes to give it. Thus, there is in the utterance just mentioned, as in a number of other vattavvam siyā, apparently nothing other than "one can let the assertion be valid.” Mahāvīra realized that an object is subject to a different judgement, depending on the viewpoint from which one observes it. The general form, though, is not to be attributed to him; it belongs rather to the syādvāda of which the canon does not yet know;" for Mahāvīra, however, the sentence was justified without restriction (to a particular standpoint), as manifold examples of disparate content and various types show, even the one mentioned earlier. That he discovered it is less the result of speculation than of life experience. Mahāvīra professed with determination the moral tenets he laid down, and the structure of the world and content of the world which he proclaimed; at the same time he also had the capacity common to (many) great intellects to observe facts of life from different sides. We may see his doctrine of standpoints as the philosophical outcome of this gift which, in its components, at the same time evinces his intellectual eminence.
gamamāne gae, viikkamijjamāṇe viikkante, Rāyagiham nagaram sampāviukāme sampatte (neuters!). 0 The echo of vattavva in the word vaktavya of the syādvāda formula is, of course, incidental.