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NYAYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
Rāmānuja also says that contradictory features like existence and non-existence are impossible to be simultaneously attributed any more than light and darkness.
In defence of Jainism it may be said that the charge is not well-founded. In this connection, we may quote Radhakrishnan, 4 “The Jainas admit that a thing cannot have self-contradictory attributes at the same time and in the same sense. All that they say is that everything is of a complex nature and reconciles differences in itself. Attributes which are contradictory in the abstract coexist in life and experience. The tree is moving in that its branches are moving and it is not moving since it is fixed to its place. Thus, the attribution of contradictory features to a thing is not only not impossible but is conductive to the correct understanding of the nature of an object. The position that is adopted by the Jainas is this—“Pure logic prior to and independent of experience is a blind guide to the determination of truth. Logic is to rationalize and systematize what experience offers”. 5 The Jainas do not deny the simple fact that contradictory features cannot be attributed to an object in the same context. It is only when the determinants are different that a thing has contradictory features. “According to Syādvāda, the contradiction is not a fact transcending or confounding the laws of logic, i. e. to say, a fact which because it is a fact, has somehow to be accepted whatever the difficulties of thought—as is done in the Anirvacaniyavāda of Sankara school, it is a fact perfectly amenable to the laws of logic, a fact which logic easily succeeds in showing to be no contradiction at all in as much as supposed contradictory elements refer to two different aspects of the same reality”. If the contexts vary, the features that are applicable to an object under certain conditions can
