New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 76

68 New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
diction should be an occasion for our attention as to whether it is due to the divergence of the referents, viz. the generic and the specific attributes. Ad philosophical contradiction would melt away spontaneously if a real is looked at from all plausible viewpoints without putting an exclusive stress on any one of them.
The Samkhya system propounds the 'puruṣa' as an unchanging eternal entity. The Buddhist philosophers, on the other hand, believe in momentariness of everything. The substantial (dravyärthika) and the modal (paryāyārthika) viewpoints are not inspired by these doctrines. The substance, in Jainism, is synthesis of continuity, origination and cessation. Neither origination-cessation independent of continuity nor continuity independent of origination-cessation is given to experience. This mutual entailment of the two aspects (origination cessation and continuity) is responsible for the substantial and modal viewpoints, which demonstrates that the continuity aspect of the substance is permanent and unchanging whereas the origination cessation aspect is impermanent and everchanging. The permanence and impermanence of the substance is not based on the viewpoints. But in fact the latter are based on the former. In other words, it is the nature of things that is the source of nayas and not that the nature of the things is determined by them.
Identity and difference are the intrinsic attributes of the substance. The substantial viewpoint represents the former whereas the modal viewpoint is based on the latter. The modes are twofold, viz. (1) represented by an identical concept (vyañjana paryāya), and (2) the modes that are objective (artha-paryāya). The former are a kind of continuity of homogeneous change expressed by words. The latter appear indivisible or the like being ultimate in appearance or reality. The substance as an entity is unitary and indivisible. It becomes many and infinite as divided into objective and conceptual or verbal modes. A person is called 'man' from birth to death. The onlooker always finds him as a person on account of the conceptual or verbal symbol, viz. 'person'. This is the identity aspect of the substance. But the person passes through infancy, youth and such other stages. Infancy again is also divisible in sub-stages, for instance, the milking babe, a three year old child and so forth.
In this way the conceptual or the verbal modes represent both identity and multiplicity of a thing.
According to the Upanişads the ultimate reality is ineffable, being expressible only negatively by the verbal symbols (neti neti)."