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JAINISM presence of a particular factor. The Jaina philosophers refer to four main factors in this connection, the factors, namely of Substance (dravya), Place (kşetra), Time (käla) and Mode (paryāya). In regard to the pot, for example, it might be made of mud or any other substance. When we look at the pot from the point of view of the substance, mud : if it is made of mud, and only if it is made of mud we can assert the existence of the pot, not otherwise. Similarly the existence of the pot can be asserted from the point of view of its existence at a particular place, not from the point of view of the place where it is not. The other two factors may be similarly explained. The existence of the pot is true only from the point of view of the ‘present', i. e., from the point of view of its presence during a particular period of time. The pot was not before its production and will not be after its destruction. From these points of view the existence of the pot cannot be maintained. Similarly when the mud, the basic substance is moulded in a particular way, and given a particular shape, we may say "the pot is", not otherwise. If given a different shape it exists in a different mode not in the mode we assert.
2. The proposition “Pot is not”—is not a contradictory of the first proposition. Only beween contradictory propositions we have absolute opposition, so that when we assert the truth of one (proposition) the falsity of the other is asserted and vice versa. Very often the opposition between the first and the second propositions is considered to be of the contradictory type and hence it is maintained that to say that the propositions "The pot exists” and “The pot does not exist” are both true is unintelligible and illogical.
mplication is that if the pot exists its existence cannot be denied and if it does not exist, its existence cannot be asserted.
What is denied in the second proposition is not the existence of the pot as far as the specific qualities asserted are concerned. There is the act of denial only when other properties which are not positively present are asserted. In more concrete terms: the proposition "The pot does not exist” does not signify “The pot does not exist as pot”. It means merely that the pot does not exist as cloth (pața) or as anything else.
3 & 4. The third and the fourth propositions, viz., “The Pot is and is not” and “The pot is indescribable”- clearly point to the Jaina view that Reality as also the objects that reflect it are com
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