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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
it to signify two contradictory matters. Hence although the Arhat is a deliverer and not a deliverer at one and the same time, language is incapable of expressing this nature of his. The fourth Bhanga of the Syādvada accordingly is otherwise put as "The Arhat is inexpressible".
It is interesting to observe that both the Vedantins and the Madhyamika Buddhists arrive at the conclusion that things are Anirvāçya or indeterminable, the fourth Bhanga of the Jaina's. The difference however, between the Jaina theory on the one hand and the Vedantist and the Buddhist on the other, is that while with the latter two, the indescribableness or inexpressibility of the nature of things is absolute, that with the former is Syat i.e. in some respects only.
In this connection, we venture to submit that possibly it would not be wrong to hold that just as language is incapable of expressing the aspect of the nature of reality which is contemplated in the fourth Bhanga, an ordinary mind is also unable to have a definite grasp of it. A real has two aspects, one of which apparently contradicts the other. But language cannot express these two aspects by means of one and the same word. In the same manner, our empirical mind also is incapable of having a simultaneous grasp of contradictory aspects of the nature of a real. Reality, so far as the fourth predication goes, is thus not only inexpressible but also in some respects, unknowable. As a matter of fact, Herbert Spencer, Kant and many upholders of the doctrine of the psycho-physical parallelism have held that the ultimate nature of things is unknowable.
In the third Bhanga, the totality or summation of the constituent contradictory elements was found to present a new characteristic of its own. The fourth Bhanga also presents in the same manner, an aspect of its subject which was not presented by the first, the second or the third. The difference between the third and the fourth Bhanga seems to be this that while in the former, the constituent elements preserve their mutual existence and independence, in the
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