Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

Page 62

JAINISM : ITS PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
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things such as the sky-flower and rabbit's horns, and that they too exist in some way, since what can accommodate the negative predication that it is not must also accommodate the positive predication that it is. The reply is that the asti-nästi doctrine is applicable only to existing reals. It is only in the case of an existing reality that one can talk of svadravya and paradravya, svakşetra and paraksetra, etc. But in the case of a non-existing thing, one cannot apply these different points of view, and hence the doctrine is not applicable to absolute nonentities, but only to the reals.
Based upon this principle is the doctrine of saptabhangi, the seven modes of predication. In order to speak of something in relation to its own substance or locality, time or mode, affirmation or asti is needed, while in relation to another substance or locality, time or mode, negation or nästi is to be used. If both the aspects are to be spoken of, then both asti and nästi are to be used, but one after another. Again, if both the aspects, affirmative and negative, in the same predication, are to be expressed, it becomes inexpressible by language it is avaktavya. These are the four initial modes of predication in the group of saptabhangi. By attaching the fourth term 'avaktavya' to
h of the first three. we arrive at the seven modes of
cation: asti. nästi. asti-năsti, avaktavua. asti-avaktavya, násti-avaktavya, and asti-nasti-avaktavya. These are the only seven possible modes of predication that we can have.
Is it possible to make the predication in each case in an absolute sense? Jaina logic does not recognize any such absolute predication. The nature of reality does not admit of it. Any real substance, since it embodies in itself the qualities as well as its modifications, must be described as something permanent in the midst of change, an identity in the midst of difference. One cannot describe a thing as absolutely unchanging permanence, or absolute change without permanence. Similarly, one cannot assert that the qualities are absolutely distinct from the thing, nor that they are absolutely identical, since reality is by nature an identity in the midst of diversity, unity in the midst of multiplicity, permanence in the midst of change. Since