Truthfullness and Truth in Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Peter Flugel
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

Page 28

मार्च २०१०
four modes were first taught at the time of DVS 7, which she dates between 5th-4th century BCE.
१९३
4 In contrast to the debate on the use of the catus-koți in 'Buddhist logic', focusing largely on the 'negative dialectic' of Nagarjuna, the cited Jain cases indicate that the catus-koți was used (at least by Jains) from early on as a scholastic frame for the discussion of logical alternatives, without specific doctrinal implications being connected with the frame itself. MURTI (1955: 129) noted early on: 'Four alternative views are possible on any subject'. Notably, the four alternatives in Ayära 2.4.1.4 etc., are disjunctive, not additive, as stereotypical representations of 'Jaina Logic' generally assume. Because Jain usage of catus-kotis was ignored, and because of the almost exclusive focus on Nagarjuna, Buddhist scholars compared the 'four-cornered negation' only with the 'Jain relativism' in general. They derived the catus-koți either speculatively from Jain syad-vāda (GUNARATNE 1980: 232) or vice versa (BAHM 1957: 128), or (and) contrasted it with 'the relativistic logic proposed by the Jains, to which Buddhism was opposed' (JAYATILLEKE 1967: 82). According to RAJU (1954), the mythical Sanjaya framed the four alternatives already in the 7th century BCE, negating all of them, whereas 'Jaina logicians saw a relative truth in each pole and thus adopted a more positive and determinate attitude toward our cognitions of the world." For recent, less logocentric, views on Nagarjuna, focusing on 'skillful means', see for instance JONES (1978), SCHROEDER (2000). A similar four-valued theory of truth was defended by the Megarians (PRIESTROUTLEY 1989: 13), which demonstrates that no specific philosophical position is associated with the form itself, only with its uses.
5 See DUNDAS (2007: 50 f.) on the analogy between four types of armies and four types of ascetics in Thana 292 (4.280-1). ALSDORF (1966: 186 f., cf. 190 f.) discussed a different type of catur-bhangas in Jaina literature, made up of combinations of two positive and two negative possibilities. He pointed out that the use of the 'fourfold combination' is 'very typical of the scholastic who never misses an opportunity to make a "caturbhanga", i.e. the four possible combinations of two positive and two negative possibilities...' (p. 186).
Thāna 3.239 offers also a trilemma: (1) to state the truth (tavvayana <tadvacana>), (2) to state the untruth (tadannavayana <tadanyavacana>), (3) to state something meaningless or negative (no-avayana <noavacana>); Thāņa 7.129 a heptalemma: (1) speech (alava <alāpa>), (2)
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