________________
The Jaina Theory of Liberation and the Non-absolute :: 237
truth must become false if a wrong reference-system is attributed to it. Kundakunda's universe of discourse is confined to the pure soul and so the truths depending upon the impure and the vyavahāra view-points must come out to be false. But this validity of the pure view-point and the falsity of the impure and the vyavahāra view-points are only relatively true, i.e., they must be accommodating to each other. Moreover no naya proceeds on something positive to determine the emergence of the vyavahāra and the asuddhaniscaya nayas. Rājamalla says that they proceed on account of the negativity of the soul. A naya is never without the support of something real in the existent, or there will be no regulative principle for the formulation of nayas. So we come to the conclusion that what Kundakunda thinks ethically false cannot be so metaphysically.
Kundakunda gives a description of the soul from the view-point of pure niscaya-naya and thinks it to be valid. When a question is raised as to the thesis of the niścya-naya, Rājamalla states that not this (neti) is its thesis and for this reason its is also a naya.”? The subject matter for the niscayanaya is the negation of the vyavahāra, and it is the highest reality. From the view-point of niscaya-naya "there is neither substance, nor attribute, nor both of them, nor their totality. There is only the non-dualism of sat which may be taken to be an attribute of a substance. ”4 The description of the soul may be effected from different view-points. No proposition can give us its full description. Whatever is predicated of the soul affirmatively just excludes the other possibilities. Hence a better description must consist of negative statements. Being a negative statement it cannot touch the reality of the soul derectly, but it is more suited as it guards us from taking any one characteristic for the whole of the
1. Rājamalla: Pañcădhyāyi, I, verse 531 2. Ibid., verse 601 3. Ibid., verse 598 4. Ibid., verse 635
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
