Nyayavatara and Nayakarnika

Author(s): Siddhasena Divakar, Vinayvijay, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

Page 311

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Naya-karnikā
text, their number is seven hondred. But as the principal ones are the seven described here, it would serve no useful purpose to enumerate the others.
We may now proceed to consider these seven principal Nayas separately.
1) Naigama, from na, not, eko, one, and gama, certainty, hence the non-distinguished, is a point of view which does not distinguish between the general and special qualities of a thing. For instance, when the word bamboo is used, a number of general as well as special qualities are at once referred to without a distinction being made among them. The bamboo tree has a number of qualities which are common to it and other trees; and, in addition, it is possessed of a number of special qualities which are peculiar to it alone, and are not to be found in the remaining members of the genus tree. The word bamboo, therefore, at once refers the mind to a large number of qualities, some of which are the special property of the bamboo alone, while the rest are common to it and all other trees in general.
Since it is not possible to separate these two kinds of qualities in an actual bamboo, the particular qualities thereof remain undistinguished from those common to all the trees in existence. This kind of description is, therefore, called the non-distinguished. It is not to be supposed that no distinction whatever is implied in the Naigama Naya, inasmuch as the mere mention of the word bamboo is sufficient to exclude all other trees from consciousness. What is meant is only this, that as the concept bamboo is equivalent to the concept tree plus a number of special qualities added to it, the word bamboo at once calls