Jain Philosophy | Anekantavada, Clay and the Pot

A potter turns a lump of clay into a pot. The lump’s shape has disappeared, a vessel has come into being and the clay remains. A classical Jain commentary uses this example to show how change and continuity can belong to the same event. It provides an entry into anekāntavāda, the Jain teaching that a real thing has many aspects and that a statement about it brings some aspects into view. Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.30 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary · Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.32 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary

What changes when clay becomes a vessel

The Tattvārtha Sūtra describes existence in terms of origination, destruction and permanence. Pūjyapāda’s commentary explains those terms with the clay. The pot originates, the lump’s shape is lost, and the material persists in the new form. If the pot breaks, the vessel form is lost as well. The pieces are still clay. Each claim answers a different question about the same material and its forms. Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.30 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary

The example distinguishes a substance, dravya, from its modes, paryāyas. The changing forms can be described through their appearance and disappearance. The continuity can be described by attending to the substance through those changes. Taking either description as complete would leave part of the example unexplained. Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.30 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary · Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.32 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary

What a standpoint selects

In commenting on another verse, Pūjyapāda uses the case of a person who is both a father and a son. Each description answers a different question about that person’s relationship to someone else. The context makes one aspect primary for the statement while the other aspects remain present. The same reasoning helps explain how a substance can be described as enduring in one respect and changing in another. Tattvārtha Sūtra 5.32 and Pūjyapāda’s commentary

How Jain philosophers qualify a claim

Syādvāda is a way of expressing this attention to respects in language. In the discussion of verse 14 of Samantabhadra’s Āptamīmāṃsā, syāt signals that a claim holds in a specified respect. A jar may be said to be earthen when the question concerns its material, and to be in a room when the question concerns its location. The same commentary sets those affirmations alongside the corresponding negations. The jar is neither made of wood nor on the terrace in the example. The statements have determinate conditions. Samantabhadra, Āptamīmāṃsā, verse 14 and commentary

The tradition develops seven forms of predication from qualified affirmation, negation and a form called avaktavya, commonly rendered as inexpressibility. The commentary uses the last term for a difficulty in expressing affirmation and negation together in one utterance. It also distinguishes that case from stating the affirmations and negations in succession, with their respective qualifications. Samantabhadra, Āptamīmāṃsā, verse 14 and commentary

Conclusion

The clay example shows why a Jain philosopher can say that something comes into being, passes away and persists. The descriptions pick out the vessel, the discarded form and the continuing substance. Anekāntavāda calls attention to that complexity, and syādvāda gives a way to say exactly which respect a judgment concerns.

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