Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
out that Words or Sounds do not necessarily accompany all forms of our cognition. We have visual perceptions of Blue etc., which are not attended with any corresponding words: perception is possible without Sounds. Can we, again, identify Objects with Sounds? It is manifest to everyone that Objects are certainly different from the ordinary Sounds or Words which are used to express them.
As regards the three alleged kinds of Words, the Vaikhari, the Madhyamā and the Sūkşma, the Jainas point out that the nature of an Object and its perception have nothing to do with the first and the second kinds of Words. The alleged third kind of Words, is no real Word or Sound at all, in as much as it consists in a revelation or direct vision of the Self or the object. Then, again, so far as the Objects of the world are concerned, does the Sabda Brahma or the Noumenal Sound modify itself into each and every object or does it not? In the first case, the Sound becomes many in number, which is opposed to the Sābdika theory. In the second case, the variedness of the Objects and their states become inexplicable.
The theory that the world consists essentially in Sound, being but a modification of it, is thus not acceptable at all. The Jainas thus agree with the Nāiyāyikas and other thinkers in rejecting the Sābdika doctrine that Sound is the one and the ultimate Real, underlying the phenomena of the world.
VEDĀNTA THEORY OF BRAHMA, AS THE ONLY REALITY
If the above Šābdădvaita-vāda of the Sābdika school is unacceptable to the Jainas, it may be easily surmised that the Brahmādvaita-vāda or the pure absolutism of the Vedānta schools also would be rejected by them. The Vedānta thinkers, as is well known, maintain that the Brahma is the only Real and the world with its phenomena is unreal. The Vedāntists contend, inter alia, that the socalled Reals of the world would, on examination, be found to be fat:F9719 i.e. lacking in essential reality of their own.