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CHAPTER ONE
what their respective subject-matters are, but its chief aim is to look for the seed of compatibility among views that appear to be mutually contradictory but are not really so. So the doctrine of naya can be briefly interpreted as follows. It is the discipline which looks for the seed of real compatibility among views that appear to be mutually contradictory and which thus synthesizes these views. For example, mutually contradictory views are found propounded concerning soul itself. Thus at some place it is said 'the soul is one,' at another place it too is said 'the souls are many' Now oneness and manyness appear to be mutually contradictory, and so the question arises 'Is this mutual contradiction among these statements real or not? If it is not real, why?' The answer to this querry has been found out by doctrine of naya and the following is the syntheses it has worked out. Quâ individual units the soul are many but if attention is fixed on the aspect of pure consciousness they are all one. Working out such syntheses the doctrine of naya demonstrates the mutual compatibility-the possibility of standing together-among even such statements as are mutually contradictory. Thus on the basis of the doctrine of naya there is demonstrated the mutual compatibility among so many views concerning soul that appear to be mutually contradictory-e.g. the view that it is permanent and the view that it is transient, the view that it is active and the view that it is inactive, and so on and so forth. The seed of such compatibility lies in the viewpoint-the intention of the thinker concerned. And the word apekṣā appearing in this discipline stands just for viewpoint thus understood; hence the doctrine of naya is also called the doctrine of apekṣā.
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Why the Separate Enunciation of the Doctrine of Naya and How Is It a Specializing Feature of Jainism :
In the earlier given account of cognition the type called śruta has already been discussed. Now śruta is a cognition of the nature of considered views and since naya too is a variety of
1. See Chapter One, aphorism 20.
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