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CONCLUSION
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and significant.
It is clear that Nyāya view of negation is based on the assumption that things have negative characters. This view implicitly involves the Jaina theory that a thing has an infinite number of characters. It is Jaina view that the world of experience can be described through various types of statements and negative statements are one among them. Thus, Jainism like Nyāya, admits the reality of negation, as according to it difference is real. In Jainism, negation is an essential aspect of reality. But the difference between Jaina and Nyāya view consists in the fact that negation in Jainism is not an independent entity, as Nyāya holds. However, it is neither unreal nor mental construction as Advaitin maintains. But it is an aspect of a thing and it has as much reality as any aspect of a thing has. In this way, both Nyāya and Jaina realism are committed to admit the reality of negation and yet there is a marked difference between the views held by them. Negation, in Jainism, is not real in and by itself, but it is of a tentative character. In keeping with its basic tenet of non-absolutism, Jainism does not assign absolute reality to non-existence though it is an element of a nature of a real thing. It is not substantive in itself but is of the nature of an essential adjective to a real thing.
In Nyāya, negation is real but it inheres in a thing different from the one in which existence inheres. It seems that Nyāya philosophers fail to understand the fact that affirmation and negation can be made of one and the same object as Jainas maintain. In Jainism negation means difference or diversity of being rather than non-being. In Jainism, therefore, problem of negation becomes primarily an epistemological problem. Negative propositions are Nyā.-14
