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NYAYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
object in the sense of one sided and partial truth about an object. It ignores the other aspects of an object though does not deny them. It deals with some particular aspect of an object. In Nyāyāvatār, the earliest Jaina work on pure logic, we find this theory. “Since things have many characters, they are the objects of all-sided knowledge but a thing conceived from one particular point of view is the object of Naya”. 2
Naya is neither a form of false knowledge nor a pramāņa since it produces certain knowledge about a part of an object.
An entity can be looked at from different standpoints. Theoretically such view points can be infinite in number but the main approaches generally recognized by Jaina philosophers are seven in number. Accordingly, Jainism has formulated the methodological scheme which consists of seven ways of looking at reals. They are :1. Naigamanaya : The non-distinguished standpoint. It is a view point which does not distinguish between general and particular properties of a thing. Here object is taken in its generic and specific capacities because an object possesses both and since they are relative, they remain undistinguished, e. g. we may understand by the term “bamboo” its genus and differentia. "The distinction between the generic and the specific features of the bamboo is not within the focus of our attention, although it is undoubtedly at the back of our minds. This truth, namely that when some aspect of concrete situation in reality is in the foreground of our attention, the other aspects recede into the background, is one of the cardinal principles of the modern Gestalt, or Configurationist, school of psychology. Also, it holds, good of not merely the 'non-distinguished standpoint, but also of all
