Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
together the various aspects in thought so as to realize that the truth consists in the irresolvable combination of all the possible aspects; and in order to convey the truth correctly all the seven modes of predication detailed above, have to be accepted. This theory implies the non-isolation of parts, ingredients, properties, aspects, etc., of a thing and the method to comprehend and speak of it synthetically. It is impossible to predicate the various and numerous aspects of a thing in a single statement, but they must be implied by the statement which predicates any one of them. In this way there is no likelihood of the person spoken to being misled. Recognising the complexity of existence, the Jaina philosopher says that since a thing has several aspects and relations, there will be as many determinations, and that the apparently conflicting attributes inhering in the thing can be expressed only through this process of predication. There is nothing mysterious or incredible in it; and when the same subject can have two self-contradictory predicates, such as affirmation (‘is) and negation ('is not'), no one predicate can monopolise the subject to itself. There will always be some aspect of the subject left out by one predicate, which can very well be expressed by the rival predicate.
In short, we can never employ a predication which is the only true predication about the subject. To quote Dr. H.S. Bhattacharya. “The seven predications of the sapta-bhanga are vitally connected with the facts of experience, and since in our real experience a phenomenon does not present more than seven aspects, corresponding to the seven propositions of the syādvāda, the sapta-bhanga consists in seven predications and seven predications only.” The sapta-bhangi-nyāya, the logic of seven conditional modes of predication, is the dialectical process in which thesis and antithesis reconcile in a higher synthesis: it is a reconciliation of conflicting approaches.