New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 59

Axioms of Non-absolutism 51
Non-absolutism: Results and Problems
The philosophical speculations based on the non-absolutistic attitude gradually gained in depth. By the eighth century A.D. Acarya Haribhadra and Akalanka further widened its scope. Acarya Haribhadra's Anekāntajayapatākā bears self-evident testimony to this process. The synthetic approach had also an uninterrupted growth. A serious doubt, however, presented itself. The question arose as to whether Jaina philosophy is a mere syncretistic eclectic movement or it had its own original thinking. Some modern scholars also adopt this line of thinking and are convinced that the Jaina thinkers developed their own philosophy by appropriating alien doctrines. Such thought owes its origin to the synthetic approach of the Jainas to philosophical problems. Vācaka Umäsvati raises the question whether the nayas are the proponents of alien philosophies or independent upholders of opposition inspired by diverse opinions, and answers that they are only different estimates (literally, concepts derived from different angles of vision) of the object known.22 Yatha va pratyakṣānumānopamānāptavacanaiḥ pramānaireko'rthaḥ pramiyate svaviṣayaniyamat, na ca tā vipratipattayo bhavanti tadvad nayavada iti. It is also asserted in this connection that there is no contradiction between them, just as there is none between different cognitions of the same object by different instruments of knowledge, such as perception, inference, comparison and the words of a reliable person.
This topic will receive a special treatment in the next chapter on the doctrine of nayas.23