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THE SYSTEM OF SYADVADA
گرنه بيند بروز شیر چشم - چشمه آفتاب را چه گناه
[If the bat's eye is unable to perceive the glories of nature during the
day,-- What fault therein of the Fountain of Light in the Sun ?)
Many people have found fault with the system of Syadvada, and even today there are men of education and culture who have not found aught but puerile wriggling and wrangling in it. Many of these men who have thus fallen foul of it are sincere thinkers, so that it is not possible to attribute the condemnation of the doctrine to bigotry and religious prejudice in each and every case.
Yet Syadvada is simplicity itself and an essential element of true metaphysics. Why it has not met with the appreciation its merit entitles it to, is due to two causes in the main, namely, firstly, the lack of exact thought on the part of the thinking men generally, and, secondly, to the eccentric vagary of the human mind that delights in the discomfiture and bafflement rather than the enlightenment of an opponent, in argument. The first of these causes will also tend to become accentuated by the natural human tendency to ridicule a pet theory of a rival Faith, and the present tendency of modern culture, that encourages expression even at the cost of deliberation, is not unlikely to add its venom to a sense of hatred, or repugnance, for a creed of seeming 'contraries' which the Jainas delight in postulating, in the most bewildering way, and which appears, at first sight, to be nothing more than a glib denial of definiteness to thought and basic firmness to nature and nature's work.
It is characteristic of the human mind that it is ever prone to condemn what it has not understood or what is beyond its normal ken. Hence, we are not surprised at the condemnation of the Syadvada by such men even as Prof. S. K. Belvalkar (see "The Undercurrents of Jainism”). As already stated, the modern tendency
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