Truthfullness and Truth in Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Peter Flugel
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

Page 41

२०६
(ii)
अनुसन्धान ५० (२)
cloud has rained" (Ayara 2.4.1.12-13).
False appearance and deception should be avoided by all means: 'A muni speaks of appearance, ignoring the truth, encounters a sin. Then what to speak of one who indulges in whole untruth [Note by LALWANI: When a woman is dressed as a man and if she be called a man, it is a falsehood, though in her dress she appears like a man...].' (DVS, 7.5, cf. Ayāra 2.4.1.3). Ways of 'establishing what is not', such as vague promises and speculation, are also seen. indiscriminate or deceptive utterances, because of the confusion of past, present, and future. Language which may create doubt (maybe or not') has to be avoided by all means: 'When one knows not true implication, in the context of the present, past, and future, says not one, "surely it's like this". When one is in doubt about implication, in the context of the present, past and future, says not one, "surely it's like this". "Surely it's so", says one when one has not an iota of doubt of implication about the present, the past and future' (DVS, 7.8-10, cf. DVS, 7.6-7, Ayara 2.4.1.5). It is remarkable, that early Jainism already insists on the correct use of temporal modalities, which must be related to the philosophy of transmigration, but also with the critique of the Brāhmaṇic sacred-word theory: 'speech exists only the moment when being spoken' (SCHUBRING § 68 2000: 149). The practical value of all the cited examples is the same: reducing illusory appearances to their 'real' content.
(iii) There are no further maxims concerning 'changing the meaning' in the texts on the ways of speaking. Effectively, however, Jain narrative literature is based on a method of 'changing the meaning' of Indian folklore (HERTEL 1922). The combined systematicity and context-sensitivity of Jain rules and regulations is particularly obvious in the following statement of the Digambara author Vasunandin's (1100 CE) Śravakacāra 209, which propagates not only the 'abstention from untruth spoken out of passion or hate' but 'from truth too, if it provokes the destruction of a living being' (cited in WILLIAMS 1983: 78). This and similar examples illustrate how the hierarchically superior principle of ahimsa supersedes the maxim of truthfulness in cases of rule