Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Silence and Contradiction in the Jaina Saptabhaṅgī

  • Published:
Journal of Indian Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The Jaina saptabhaṅgī (seven angles of analysis or types of sentences) has drawn the attention of non-classical logicians due to its unique use of negation, contradiction, and avaktavya (‘unutterable’). In its most basic structure, the saptabhaṅgī appears as: (i) in a certain sense, P; (ii) in a certain sense, not P; (iii) in a certain sense, P and not P; (iv) in a certain sense, inexpressibility of P; (v) in a certain sense, P and inexpressibility of P; (vi) in a certain sense, not P and inexpressibility of P; (vii) in a certain sense, P, not P, and inexpressibility of P. This appearance has led many (e.g., Ganeri and Priest) to claim that the saptabhaṅgī supports non-classical systems of logic, but such a reading is contested by Balcerowicz. Focusing on Vādidevasūri’s (12th c. CE) and Yaśovijaya’s (17th c. CE) accounts of the saptabhaṅgī, this paper puts forward a formalization of the saptabhaṅgī that brings together the non-classical views and Balcerowicz’s view through relating the saptabhaṅgī to the Buddhist unanswerable questions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. K3 and LP attribute an additional truth-value (either a truth-value gap or a truth-value glut) to the more common true and false. K3 is characterized by a truth-value gap (see Kleene (1938) and Priest (2002, pp. 122–124)). LP is structurally similar to K3 but is characterized by a truth-value glut (see Priest (1979) and Priest (2008, pp. 124–125). D2 is a modal logic based on the modal system S5 (see Jaśkowski (1969) and Ganeri (2002, pp. 275–276)). D2 differs from K3 and LP since neither is inherently modal.

  2. In focusing on these two Śvetāmbara philosophers, I engage a very developed account of the saptabhaṅgī. This is not to say that there are important earlier developments. In fact, the first three bhaṅga start to be formulated in the Vyāhapannatti and the Paṃcatthiyasaṃgaha and the Pavayaṇasāra, which are attributed to Kundakunda (between 3rd and 6th c. CE). These earlier “formations” lack avaktavya and often syāt. The earliest formulization of the complete saptabhaṅgī appears to be in Siddhasena Divākara’s (ca. 450–500 CE) Saṃmatitarkaprakaraṇa. (See Balcerowicz’s (2015, pp. 202–204) analysis for more details.) My focus on the two later Śvetāmbara philosophers is to specifically show that Ganeri (2002) and Priest (2008) are wrong in their interpretation of the later saptabhaṅgī.

  3. Schang (2010, 2013) also relates the saptabhaṅgī to the unanswerable questions.

  4. Unless otherwise noted translations from the Sanskrit and Pāḷi are my own. The “Sri Lanka Tripitaka Project” (Access to Insight) is used for the source for the Pāḷi.

  5. The four questions regarding the Tathāgata are also listed in the Khemā Sutta, the Anurādha Sutta, Sāriputta Koṭṭhita Sutta (1–4), and the Sabhiya Sutta.

  6. In the Cūḷa Māluṅkyovāda Sutta, the Buddha compares these ten questions to be as ridiculous as a foolish person asking questions (e.g., the caste and clan of the archer, what the bow is made out of, what the arrow is made out of, etc.)) before attempting to remove a poisoned arrow and treat the wound.

  7. For the Prakrit, Matilal cites Pupphabhikkhu’s (pp. 609–610) edition of the Bhagavatī Sūtra.

  8. Balcerowicz (2015, p. 181) adds a fourth: ineffable transient occurrences (vartanā, vivarta). He also notes the similarity between these four conditions with the Sarvāstivāda and Abhidharma positions.

  9. Following Vādidevasūri’s analysis in the PNTĀA: Undistinguished is the standpoint in which one rejects (or fails) to clearly label a real object as a substance or as a modification (PNTĀA 7.6). General is the standpoint that focuses on the commonalities between two (or more) substances allowing them to be grouped together (PNTĀA 7.13). Practical is the standpoint that focuses on the distinctions between two (or more) substances leading to a division into (at least) two separate groups (PNTĀA 7.24). These first three standpoints are focused on a categorization of substances: undistinguished appears as a “faulty” or conflated categorization, general is focused on bringing alike substances together, and practical is focused on dividing substances (or modifications) based on distinctions. Straight-thread is the standpoint of the immediate perceptions of modifications that one is undergoing (PNTĀA 7.28). Verbal is the standpoint of the grammatical regarding verbal tense that may indicate continuation, arising, or fading. Ascending is the standpoint of etymology in which different etymological understandings of a word may lead to separate standpoints based on sense (or connotations) (PNTĀA 7.37). Thus-happened is the standpoint of focusing on the currently occurring activity of a substance (PNTĀA 7.41). Besides straight-thread, the standpoints of pertaining to modification concern only words or language. We can summarize pertaining to modification as concerning only the standpoints based on immediate perception or language regarding the modification of a substance.

  10. As a reviewer indicated to me, Prabhācandra posits a saptabhaṅgī that applies to seven perspectives and one that applies to the four parameters. Only the second is equivalent to syādvāda. The non-classical logicians of this study seem to conflate to two distinct saptabhaṅgīs.

  11. See “Contradiction and The First Three Bhaṅgas” and “The Fourth Bhaṅga and the Unanswerable Questions” sections for the original passages.

  12. See also Priest and Routley (1989, pp. 16–17).

  13. I use ‘∧’ instead of Ganeri’s ‘&’ for the connective.

  14. In contrast to Ganeri, Balcerowicz (2015, p. 193) translates this passage as follows: “Because in the fourth [statement], in which the [expressed] property is “inexpressibility”, there is no comprehension of existence and non-existence. As one should realise, it is not the case that one can express these two [existence and non-existence], when emphasized simultaneously, with a word ‘inexpressible’. Rather, because it is completely impossible to express these two when emphasized in such a way (sc. simultaneously), one wants to demonstrate with this [fourth sentence] still another property ‘inexpressibility’.”

  15. I use ‘∧’ instead of Balcerowicz’s ‘&’ for the conjunctive.

  16. While the translations of Vādidevasūri and Yaśovijaya are my own, I rely on Bhattacharya (1967) and Bhargava (1973) for the Sanskrit.

  17. This same definition is used by Malliṣeṇa as noted by Balcerowicz (2015, pp. 209–210).

  18. The inclusion of eva (trans. ‘certainly’) may also be of importance for the saptabhaṅgī. Balcerowicz (2015, pp. 206–207) attributes a potential influence of Dharmakīrti’s account of eva in Samantabhadra’s (ca. 6th c. CE) presentation of the saptabhaṅgī. If Samantabhadra is influenced by Dharmakīrti, it is likely that Vādidevasūri and Yaśovijaya are as well. In Dharmakīrti’s logic, eva plays an important role as a delimiting particle (vyaccheda), see Kajiyama (1973), Gillion & Hayes (1982), and Ganeri (1999). As a delimiting particle, eva can modify the subject (dharmin), the predicate (dharma), or the verb (kriyā). When modifying the verb, eva establishes that a portion of the subject’s extension will overlap with the predicate’s extension but not all of it (as seen in the example “a lotus is blue”). It is likely that in each bhaṅga (esp. the first bhaṅga) eva modifies the verb asti. If Vādidevasūri or Yaśovijaya follow Dharmakīrti’s analysis of eva, they are using this eva. This would establish a reading that “everything has a quality” should be read as some things have a quality since only a portion of the subject’s extension can overlap the predicate’s extension. Yet, it remains unclear if either Vādidevasūri or Yaśovijaya intend this reading, and neither provides an explanation indicating support for it.

  19. The use of ‘something’, ‘such made’, ‘somewhere’, or ‘such’ is meant to prevent the commitment to the existence of abstract entities due to the existential quantifications over the predicate in the second-order sentences. The inclusion of ‘some’ or ‘such’ follows the suggestion made by Sellars (1960), in which he also warns that ‘something’ may not be grammatical. I ignore his warning and adopt ‘something’ as my main paraphrase for the existential quantification of a predicate.

  20. 'Every real thing’ in the “every real thing is something” has existential import and should be read as establishing the existence of real things (vastu).

  21. See footnote 2 for a short discussion on the earlier accounts of the saptabhaṅgī.

  22. Akalaṅka’s description in the Tattvārthavārttika (Rājavārttika) 4.42 concurs with Yaśovijaya’s explanation. See Balcerowicz (2015, pp. 215– 216 & 239) for Akalaṅka’s account.

  23. As a reviewer indicated to me, this is reminiscent to claims that Mahāvīra taught the entire Jaina dharma in a single divine sound (divyadhvani), which cannot be analyzed by normal beings.

  24. While this characterization is not established in the Pāḷi Sutta, it does appear in Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā as na vaktavya.

  25. Balcerowicz (2015) avoids some of these issues with the weaker claim that the predicate can be conceptualized but cannot be uttered. Tripathi (1968) provides a Madhyamaka critique of similar interpretations (esp. Bhattacharyya (1958)) which focus on the unutterability of the fourth bhaṅga and its relationship to cognition.

  26. By ‘category mistakes’, I mean that there could be a predicate, in which either its affirmation or negation, appears to lead to a problematic statement. For example, if I say, “the General Theory of Relativity is blue” or “the General Theory of Relativity is non-blue,” I have committed a category mistake since the General Theory of Relativity is not something that can have a color.

  27. This negative element would be distinct from the negation of the second bhaṅga and has similarities with Searle’s (1969) illocutionary denegation or Horn’s (2001) metalinguistic negation.

  28. Neither Yaśovijaya nor Vādidevasūri address the equivalent nature of these two conjunctions, and I am unsure what motivates a preference for one conjunction over the other between the two philosophers.

  29. Yaśovijaya would read the predicate marked by avaktavya as a non-existent existent predicate that (somehow) simultaneously establishes (at least) an affirmative meaning and a negative meaning. This leads avaktavya to be read as unutterable since a non-existent predicate cannot be uttered. Nevertheless, the formalization remains the same.

  30. One key reason Balcerowicz is lead to redundancies is in his interpretation of emphasis, which leads him to take logical entailments as conjunctions.

References

  • Access to Insight (Eds.) (2013). Sri Lanka Tripitaka Project: Pali Tipitaka Source Texts. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sltp/.

  • Balcerowicz, P. (2015). Do attempts to formalize the syād-vāda make sense? In P. Flügel & O. Qvarnström (Eds.), Jaina scriptures and philosophy (pp. 181–248). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhargava, D. (1973). Mahopādyāya Yaśovijaya’s Jaina Tarka Bhāṣā with translation and critical notes. Motilal Banarsidass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhattacharya, H. S. (1967). Pramāṇa-naya-tattvālokalaṃkara of Vādi Devasūri. Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhattacharya, K. C. (1958). Studies in Philosophy (Vol. 1). Progressive Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bilimoria, P. (2017). Thinking negation in early Hinduism and classical Indian philosophy. Logica Universalis, 11, 13–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cardona, G. (1967). Negations in Pāṇinian rules. Language, 43(1), 34–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganeri, J. (1999). Dharmakīrti’s semantics for the particle Eva. In Katsura’s (Ed.) Dharmakīrti’s thought and its impact on Indian and Tibetan philosophy: Proceedings of the third international Dharmakīrti conference, Hiroshima, November 4–6, 1997 (pp. 101–115). Verlag Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften.

  • Ganeri, J. (2002). Jaina logic and the philosophical basis of pluralism. History and Philosophy of Logic, 23, 267–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillion, B. S., & Hayes, R. P. (1982). The role of the particle Eva in (logical) quantification of Sanskrit. Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Südasiens Und Archiv Für Indische Philosophie, 26, 195–203.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horn, L. (2001). A natural history of negation. CSLI Publication.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaśkowski, S. (1969). Propositional calculus for contradictory deductive systems. Studia Logica: an International Journal for Symbolic Logic, 24, 143–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kajiyama, Y. (1973). Three kinds of affirmation and two kinds of negation in Buddhist philosophy. Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Südasiens Und Archiv Für Indische Philosophie, 17, 161–174.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleene, S. C. (1938). On notation for ordinal numbers. The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 3(4), 150–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Long, J. D. (2009). Jainism: An introduction. I. B. Tauris.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Matilal, B. K. (1981). The central philosophy of Jainism (Anekānta-vāda). L. D. Institute of Indology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matilal, B. K. (2000). Anekānta: Both yes and no. In N. J. Shah (Ed.), Jaina theory of multiple facets of reality and truth (Anekāntavāda) (pp. 1–16). Motilal Banarsidass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Priest, G. (1979). The logic of paradox. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8(1), 219–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Priest, G. (2002). An introduction to non-classical logic. From if to is (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Priest, G. (2008). Jaina logic: A contemporary perspective. History of Philosophy and Logic, 29, 263–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Priest, G., & Routley, R. (1989). First historical introduction: A preliminary history of paraconsistent and dialethic approaches. In G. Priest, R. Routley, & J. Normans (Eds.), Paraconsistent logic essays on the inconsistent (pp. 3–75). Philosophia Verlag.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Priest, G., Tanaka, K, & Weber, Z. (2022). Paraconsistent logic. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), E. N. Zalta (Ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/logic-paraconsistent/.

  • Schang, F. (2010). Two Indian dialectical logics: saptabhaṅgī and catuṣkoṭi. Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 27(1), 45–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schang, F. (2013). A one-valued logic for non-one-sidedness. International Journal of Jaina Studies, 9(4), 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1960). Grammar and existence: A preface to ontology. Mind, 420(276), 499–533.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shastri, M. K. (Ed.) (1941). Prameyakamala-mārtanḍa by Shri Prabha Chandra (A Commentary on Shri Manik Nandi’s Pareeksha Mukh Sutra). Nirnaya Sagar Press.

  • Tripathi, R. K. (1968). The concept of Avaktavya in Jainism. Philosophy East and West, 18(3), 187–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I thank Jay Garfield, Ethan Mills, and Lionel Shapiro as well as two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly improved the clarity and focus of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Chris Rahlwes

Authors
  1. Chris Rahlwes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Rahlwes.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rahlwes, C. Silence and Contradiction in the Jaina Saptabhaṅgī. J Indian Philos 51, 473–513 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-023-09545-5

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-023-09545-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation