New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

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New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
have recognised the validity at all times of the principle of concomitance. But the ever-growing range of knowledge and the ceaseless conversion of ignorance into new knowledge through the progress of philosophy and science oblige us to realise that the proviso, viz. 'valid at all times', cannot be satisfied independently of these developments in the range of human knowledge.
It is not found that the validity of many a so-called universal concomitance now stands rejected with the acquisition of new knowledge and discovery of scientific truths? It should not also be thought that all the ancient laws of universal concomitance were always considered to be unconditionally valid. It is, of course, true that at the time when the concomitances were ascertained and the rules for arriving at the principle of universal concomitance were formulated, such concomitances were considered true at all times. But it is not proper to say that their truth remained constant even in subsequent epochs of philosophical thinking. Our perceptual experience (pratyaksa jñāna) alone is the deciding factor in formulating universal concomitances. When we experience the repetition of a fact by means of a repeated observation, we happen to arrive at a concomitance, such as, 'this would happen on the happening of that and in the absence of that this would not be possible'.
It was universally admitted that the universal concomitance must be equally acceptable to both sides, viz. the proponent as well as the opponent. A fact whose pervasion (vyāpti) has not been ascertained by means of a valid organ of knowledge, is not accepted as a valid probans, but is considered as a fallacy called non-existent (unestablished) probans (asiddhahetvābhāsa). "The word is subject to transformation because it is visible', is an instance in point. Here the visibility is accepted as non-existent in the word, both by the proponent and the opponent. There is no concomitance between the word and the object of eye, and so the visibility of the word is not an established fact. The example given by Dharınakirti in his work Nyāyabindu in this connection is as follows'
“The trees are animate beings, because they sleep' or 'the trees are animate beings, because they die when the entire bark is taken off'. These two probantia, viz. the sleeping and the death on the bark being taken off, are not established facts for the opponent (the Buddhists), who believe that their slumber indicated by the contraction of the leaves is not true in the case of some trees,