New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 78

The Doctrine of Conditional Dialectics and Sevenfold Predication
The expression Syädvāda (conditional dialectics) is composed of two words, viz. 'syāt' and 'vāda'. The word 'syät' is an indeclinable that appears like a verbal form in the potential mood. It stands for multiplicity, obligation, reasoning etc.. But in the present context it stands for multiplicity or multiple character (anekānta).' The term is also used to denote particular space and time, as well as probability (sambhāvanā) and doubt. The word 'syāt' in the expression 'syadvāda' has not been used to mean doubt. It is used to denote multiplicity or multiple character (anekānta). The implication is that Syādvāda is the doctrine of the multiple character of real. It is a doctrine that is known as Anekānta or the non-absolutistic estimation of reality in its infinitely multiple character. This non-absolutistic estimation is definite in its character and free from all doubts as indicated by the expression syāt which is absolutely free from any kind of association, direct or indirect, with the verbal form 'syāt' used in the potential mood of Sanskrit conjugation of verbal roots.3 Probability (sambhāvanā) and relativity, however, are implied by the word 'syāt'.
The word 'syat' is necessary for the affirmation of the desired attribute to the exclusion of the undesired one. And this is why all the propositions, in order to be precise in meaning, should be accompanied by the use of the word 'syat'. The propositions without such express use of 'syāt' should be understood to have that word implicitly. The word 'sydt has a double implication:
(1) Negation without affirmation or affirmation without negation
is not possible. (2) The generic attribute (continuity or the universal) and the speci
fic attribute (origination, cessation or the particular)—both these are relative. We never experience origination cessation without continuity or the latter without the former.
The nature of a real is not omnigenous and so it exists in its own nature and does not exist in the nature of alien things, or, to be