Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/194

 17 8 The J aina Philosophy [CH. The vyavahara-naya standpoint holds that the real essence of things is to be regarded from the point of view of actual prac- tical experience of the thing, which unifies within it some general as well as some special traits, which has been existing from past times and remain in the future, but yet suffer trifling changes all the while, changes which are serviceable to us in a thousand ways. Thus a "book" has no doubt some general traits, shared by all books, but it has some special traits as well. Its atoms are continually suffering some displacement and rearrangement, but yet it has been existing as a book for some time past and will exist for some time in the future as well. All these characteristics, go to make up the essence of the "book" of our everyday ex- perience, and none of these can be separated and held up as being the concept of a "book." This according to the J ains is the Saf!1khya way of looking at things. The first view of paryaya-naya called .1JiLSiUra is the Buddhist view which does not believe in the existence of the thing in the past or in the future, but holds that a thing is a mere conglomera- tion of characteristics which may be said to produce effects at any given moment. At each new moment there are new colloca- tions of new qualities and it is these which may be regarded as the true essence of our notion of things 1. The nayas as we have already said are but points of view, or aspects of looking at things, and as such are infinite in number. The above four represent only a broad classification of these. The J ains hold that the N yaya- Vaise!;'ika, the Vedanta, the Saf!1khya, and the Buddhist,. have each tried to interpret and systematize experience from one of the above four points of view and each re- gards the interpretation from his point of view as be(.lg absolutely true to the exclusion of all other points of view. This is their error (nayiibhiisa), for each standpoint represents only one of the many points of view from which a thing can be looked at. The affirma- . tions from any point of view are thus true in a limited sense and under limited conditions. I nfinite numbers of affirmations may be made of things from infinite points of view. Affirmations or judgments according to any naya or standpoint cannot therefore . be absolute, for even contrary affirmations of the very selfsame t The other standpoints of paryaya-naya, which represent grammatical and lin- guistic points of view, are fabela-Itaya, sa11labhiritfjha-naya, and evambhiUa-naya. See Vife!dvafyaka bhii!ya, pp. 895-923.