Book Title: Studies in Jainism
Author(s): M P Marathe, Meena A Kelkar, P P Gokhle
Publisher: Indian Philosophical Quarterly Publication Puna

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Page 135
________________ 120 STUDIES IN JAINISM shadow here, they sought its explanation in the fact, given the context, that there is an umbrella here. It does not matter for our purpose here how primitive were the models the Indians of the age used: This only indicates the rural setting in which they lived. The reasoning pattern that the Jainas used included in general these five steps: (1) assertion of the proposition to be justified or pakṣa prayoga or pratijñā, (2) citing the reason or evidence, or hatu prayoga, (3) employing a vyāpti vākya together with an instantiative drsțānta or a paradigm case, (4) applying the generalisation to the particular case in question (upanaya); and finally (5) drawing the inference (nigamana).' Their vyāpti vākyas or generalisations always carried the existential interpretartion and also they could properly be described as empirical generalisetions, though of course they were not always of the cause-effect type. For, sometimes they were based on observable connections like, If a man had a father, then he had a mother also'; sometimes on the analysis of the meaning of terms like, 'If there is no certainty here, then there is uncertainty here'; and sometimes on the analysis of certain observable but essential properties of things like, "If there is heat here, then there is no sensation of cold here'.10 (8) One important feature of the Jaina logic is its emphasis on the prāmanya of the vyāpti vākyas on which, together with the knowledge of the initial conditions, depended the prāmānya of anumāna. The Jaina logician observes that the generality of a generalisation is not merely a conjuction of several observable instances, such that the knowledge of vyā pti vākya is not a matter of observation or pratyaksa. Nor is it a matter of inference or anumāna, for anumāna itself is parasitic on a vyāpti vākya. The Naiyayikas thought that tarka was an effective instrument of the prāmānya of a vyāpti vākya. But this the Jaina logician denies. For, he argues, tarka as the Naiyayikas conceived it could not even take off without the necessary logical support of a vyāpti vākya how then could it be regarded as an instrument of the prāmānya of a vāypti väkya itself ?11 It just could not be. To solve the problem of the prāmānya of a vyāpti vāykya, like Bertrand Russell12 in the West who accepted the principle of induction as a logical principle, the Jaina logician looked upon tarka as an independent pramana the sole function of which is to give us vyā ptis which are to constitute the basis of anumāna pramāna. 13 The way I have analysed the Jaina thory of pramāņa, the theory clearly is seen

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