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thing and that something persists and hence is as real as the changing modes and qualities.
Jaina ontology rests on the theory of identity and change outlined above. The Jaina view comes into bold relief when we contrast it with other points of view expressed in the Indian tradition itself, views which have naturally been critical of Jainism. In the absence of a proper understanding of the distinguishing feature of Jainism it is natural to expect the charge of self-contradiction against the identity-and-difference view of Reality and Existence. We shall dwell at some length on the various views on Reality in the next chapter. Here we shall make a pointed reference to the fact that even a serious student of Jainism like Jacobi has pointed to a lack of a central idea upholding a mass of philosophical tenets. While commencing his address to the Third International Congress for the History of Religions in 1908 he said: "All those who approach Jaina philosophy will be under the impression that it is a mass of philosophical tenets not upheld by one central idea, and they will wonder what could have given currency to what appears to us an unsystematical system.” From our point of view the words that follow are extremely significant, for Jacobi continued : “I myself have held, and given expression to this opinion' but I have now learned to look at Jaina philosophy in a different light. It has, I think, a metaphysical basis of its own, which secured it a position apart from the rival systems both of the Brahmans and of the Buddhists."10 The fact that even a scholar like Jacobi was initially critical of Jaina metaphysics and later appreciated the integrated pattern of Jaina thought as a whole re-assures us that an open-minded approach to the Jaina system is bound to result in a proper understanding of Jaina metaphysics.
One other aspect of Jaina metaphysics needs to be touched here before we pass on to contrast it with other systems of Indian thought. From the discussion of the Jaina concept of Reality, Exis
8 Jaina Vijaya Muni, edt., Studies in Jainism (Ahmedabad : Jaina Sahitya Samsodhaka Studies, 1946), p. 48
9 In his Introduction to his edition of the Kalpa-Sūtra (p. 3) he wrote that Mahāvīra's philosophy "scarcely forms a system, but is merely a sum of opinions (pannatis) on various subjects, no fundamental ideas being there to uphold the mass of philosophical matter."
10 Jina Vijaya Muni, edt., op. cit., p. 48
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