Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 147

136
VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
(2) the pen does not exist (in another context); (3) the pen exists and does not exist (respectively in its own context and in a different context); (4) the pen is inexpressible (qua having both existence and nonexistence as its attributes at the same time); (5) the pen exists (in its own context) and is inexpressible; (6) the pen does not exist (in other than its own context) and is inexpressible; (7) the pen exists and does not exist and is inexpressible. All these assertions are to be understood as subject to the conditions which objectively demarcate the attributes. Thus, existence can be predicated of the pen only in a definite context. The pen exists in so far as it is a substance and a specific substance at that, that is to say, in so far as it is a pen. Thus, existence can be predicated of it conformably to reality only by qualifying it by a necessary proviso indicated above. Again, the pen exists in its own space which it occupies and in the time in which it is known to endure. Further, the pen has a particular size, colour and shape and so on. The pen is not the pen if it is abstracted from these attributes which give it a definite individuality. Thus, substance (dravya), attribute (bhava), time (kala) and space (kşetra) form the context in relation to which an attribute, existence etc, can be predicated.”
"Thus Jaina asserts that even knowledge of a single attribute in respect of a substance must assume the form of seven modes, if it is to
from obscurity and inadequacy. The sevenfold predication is, thus, a representation of this sevenfold conception and is expressed in a set of seven distinct propositions from which the knowledge of mutually consistent predicates, affirmative or negative, in respect of one subject, is derived. The full predication of an attribute, it is asserted, requires seven distinct propositions and an additional proposition is superfluous and the suppression of any one results in incomplete knowledge."
The logical justification of each proposition has been demonstrated in my book under reference and we refrain from dilating on the subject to avoid undue inflation of the present dissertation.
The treatment of pramana and naya and relevant problems has been attempted in the preceding portion of our dissertation. But it must be incomplete without a discourse on the nature of the epistemic subject (pramātā) in which all these epistemological processes find their initial source and final repository. Our author Siddhasena Divakara describes the nature of the self in the next verse.
1. Op. cit. pp. 129-30, 2. Ibid., p. 128.
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