Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

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

Page 152

SUMMING UP
141
unity of a moment and unity is the presupposition of plurality which means plural units. If either of them is to be sacrificed, the Vedantist jettisons plurality. The realists of the Nyāya-Vaišeşika school have tried to reconcile unity with plurality by means of inherence (samavāya) and the Jaina theory of anekānta succeeds with greater plausibility in preserving the coherence of matter and spirit, unity and plurality.
The author of the Nyāyāvatāra sums up the net results of his dissertation in the concluding verse.
Text pramapadivyavastheyam anadinidhanatmikā sarvasamvyavahartrņām prasiddhăpi prakirtita //
Translation “The determinate conception (and implied classification) of cognitive organs and the like (relevant facts) is without a beginning and without an end. It is much too familiar to all human beings engaged in (theoretical an practical) activities, and this has been discussed (in this treatise).” ... (XXXII)
Elucidation The science of epistemology dealing with different cognitive organs such as perception, inference, verbal testimony and the rest together with the nayas has been surveyed in outline in this treatise. These matters are not entirely unknown even to men of average understanding and are too familiar and favourite objects of discussion by logicians of all schools. In fact scientific investigation and systematization are rather the natural consequence of human thinking as the condition of all purposeful activity. Man is a rational animal and he exercises his faculty of reasoning as a natural process of activity quite as he exercises his respiratory functions. Man is a born logician and the academic training in logic is not the condition of his rationalizing activity. Unless a man exercises his reasoning faculty in the organiza. tion of experience and forecasts the probable results of his behaviour, he cannot move an inch. Even day to day activities of the uneducated wage-earner presuppose a modicum of reasoned thinking, evaluation of his past experience, his previous success and failure, truthful verification and disappointment caused by mistakes. Academic education cannot pretend to be a source of such knowledge and activity. But it is not a fruitless waste of time and sisyphean labour. The ideas of uneducated persons are rather confused and not properly distinguished from their opposite counterparts. The academic discipline unavoidably involves an arduous course of intellectual and physical