It is a pleasure to go through the monograph on Jaina Logic and Epistemology by Sri Harimohan Bhattacharyya, M.A., Ex-Principal of the Ashutosh College, Calcutta. The method of his treatment differs from that of previous writers on the same subject. He has utilised all original sources to do full justice to his subject under discussion. His treatise is no doubt very exhaustive, systematic, comparative and clear. I find in it careful choice of facts and sobriety of judgment. He expounds the difficult points as lucidly as possible. It will be of great help in focussing the points of dispute that still exist among modern scholars. It is really for the first time that a detailed study of the subject so ably produced by Professor Bhattacharyya, will be brought out for the benefit of the scholarly world and especially for the benefit of those who have made Jainism their special subject of study and research.
Naya is the method by which things are comprehended from a particular, standpoint. It is of five kinds. The Brahmajala Sutta of the Digha Nikaya mentions takka or reasoning. Hetuvidya, which occurs in the Lalitavistara (R.L. Mitra, Ed. Chap. XII, p. 179), is logic. Naya is analytical reasoning. Noumenal and phenomenal nayas are known in Jain Logic De doctrine of nayas is just what is called Syadvada in canonical works and the nayas are no other than the seven modes of syadvada (saptabhanginaya). The Milinda-Panho, which is an important extra-cononical work of the Buddhists, mentions naya which stands for niti. The Naiyayikas are logicians mentioned in the Lalitavistara. The Lankavatara Sutra states how discussion is corrected and carried on (naiyāyikaḥ katham bruhi bhaviṣyanti anagata). The canonical texts mention nayas without fixing up their number, four or seven. Syadvada consists of seven nayas or viewpoints from which assertions are made as to truth. Sir R.G. Bhandarkar minks of nayas as points of view or principles with reference to which some judgments are arrived at or arrangements made. The canonical texts are reticent about their number. The syad mode was the real way of escape from the position of a dogmatist and that of a sceptic.
The present work is the outcome of my life-long interest in Jainism. The first incentive to its study I derived from the learned lectures on the comparative Indian Epistemology delivered by the late Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M. A., Ph.D. to the Postgraduate Philosophy classes of the Calcutta University to which I belonged during the years 1913-1915.
With growing interest in the subject I was introduced to the Late Puranchand Nahar one of the greatest Jaina scholars of his time, and later on to his illustrious son Sri Bijoy Singh Nahar, at present the Hon'ble Minister for Labour, West Bengal, who had the kindness to encourage my endeavour and who at once threw open to me his Library, perhaps the richest in Bengal, in its collection of books and manuscripts, paintings and sculpture, and many other articles that are of rare value for researches into Jainism in all its aspects. It is to the great encouragement, enthusiasm and facility of work which this magnanimous soul offered me, that the present work owes its preparation and completion. To Sri Bijoy Singh Nahar I owe a deep debt of gratitude which I would be never able to repay.
The Jaina Metaphysic is dualistic or even pluralistic Realism and differs from the realism of the Nyaya, Vaisesika and the Mimamsa systems and marks a definite healthy reaction against the Idealist Monism of the Upanisads and the Advaita Vedanta on the one hand, and against the Nihilist and the Phenomenalist Idealism of the Buddhist on the other. The Jaina intellectual activities traceable from the canonical era upto the 17th Century, by way of reaction against the Vedanta, Nyaya, Vaisesika, the Bauddha and the Carvaka systems of thought rendered possible that glorious history and unique evolution of Indian logical and metaphysical speculation that compares favourably with the twentieth century realistic reaction in the Western World against the Absolute Idealism of Hegel with its 'bloc Universe and against the Bradleyian Coherence theory of Truth and Internal relations. The Jaina by his masterly dialectic has endeavoured to establish the alternative character of truth against its absoluteness claimed by the Advaitist as well as against the scepticism and nihilism of the Bauddha. He has emphatically put us on our guard against the dogmatism of the Vedintist Monism and Bauddha disbelief in the reality of existence (nairatmavada). His logic is based on the Law of Contrariety and not on the Law of Contradiction as is often wrongly supposed. The important logical consequence of this guiding principle of Contrariety has led the Jaina to the doctrine of alternative truths which avoids dogmatism and encourages toleration and accommodation for the truths of others.
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