Spiritual Awakening and other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 61

without accepting non-existence as an element in the constitution of the real. Similarly, the characteristics of one and many, permanence and change, generality and particularity are reconciled in a thing without any incongruity. Thus when the Jinist is faced with the problem of expressing the complex content of knowledge in language in a way which can communicate to the other the knowledge as such, he had to devise the method of Syādvāda.
The word 'Syāt' when added to a proposition is indicative of the presence of multiple characteristics in a thing in addition to the characteristic referred to in the proposition under consideration. In the propostion 'Syāt Ghata is colourful', the word 'Syāt' implies that the subject Ghata is a manifold of attributes, of which the attribute of being colourful referred to in the proposition is there in the Ghata as a matter of fact. This should not be understood, as it is generally done, to mean that the existence of colour in the Ghata is doubtful. In other words, certainty of colour along with the manifoldness of characteristics is indicated by the word 'Syāt'. Thus Syādvāda is the custodian of clarity, certainty and unambiguity in the field of philosophy. It is by no means the doctrine of doubt and uncertainty.
Saptabhangivāda (Doctrine of seven-fold propositions) 42
Although an existent is possessed of infinite attributes, yet the knowing of it is not a simple affair. The question is: what is it to know a thing? And how may propositions are requisite to express the content of knowledge? The conviction of the Jaina is that the seven distinct propositions, neither more nor less are needed to express the content of knowledge in regard to an existent. Let us now illustrate the doctrine of seven-fold proposition by taking an example of the attribute 'existence' in respect of pen.
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Spiritual Awakening (Samyagdarśana) and Other Essays