Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

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

Page 67

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VAISHALİ INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETİN NO. I
condemns it on the ground of its conceptual character (vikalpatmaka). The fire that is inferred is not an existent particular but a general concept which embraces all instances of fire-past, present and future. In other words, the inferable predicate is a universal and a universal is unreal according to the Buddhist. Accordingly this doctrine of the Buddhist enforces the conclusion that the inference is erroneous at bottom. How can it be a valid cognition, since validity and error are mutually contradictory ? The Buddhist (Dharmakīti) has defended the validity of inference on the ground that though the universal concept of fire which is the inferable predicate is unreal abstraction, yet it is remotely derived from the particular fire and also leads to the acquisition of the latter. The relation of causality and identity which makes the probans necessarily concomitant with the probandum is an objective relation. Unless the inference is believed to refer to the real fire, the relation of concomitance based on causality (or identity) cannot be realized. So on the ground of the necessary relation of the probandum with the probans the inference is recognized as valid cognition though it is erroneous per se. It has been observed by the Bd ddhist "A valid cognition differs toto caelo from error which is defined as apprehension of one thing as another. The apprehension of A as B which is quite other than A is error. And as such though inference which apprehends the universal as a particular in spite of their numerical and qualitative difference and thus falls within the purview of error, yet it is regarded as valid cognition because the universal stands in necessary relation (to the particular real individual) from which inference derives its genesis. The basic relation is one of causality since the concept of the universal, say fire, is generated by the particular fire in the ultimate resort.
Siddhasena denies this laboured defence of the validity of inference on the ground of its pragmatic verification. As the concept of validity and the concept of error can never coincide without involving self-contradiction, he places inference on the same level with perceptual cognition. The objective existence of the universal has to be admitted on the evidence of experience which cannot be assailed by a barrage of apriori arguments under pain of self-contradiction. And as the universal and the particular are necessarily co-existent and one cannot be divorced from the other, the concept of the universal fire is as valid and objective as the perceived individual.
The Jaina logician does not enter into controversy with the Śūnyavădin who denies the existence of everything. Any argument advanced to prove a thesis will simply be dismissed by him on the ground of his