Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s7.t8.57

v1.c7.s7.t8.57

The Jain seven-fold judgment is obviously of regular worldly knowledge and. therefore. cannot be relied on to attain absolute truth. According to Jainism, any judgment or mode of understanding regular, worldly knowledge is limited, hence the prefix Syat. Theoretically, this theory has elements of eclecticism or agnosticism. However, it is worth pointing out that Jainism did not propose this theory without an ax to grind as an unorthodox system, like Buddhism, Jainism represents the values, beliefs and opinions of the middle-to-upper class people of non-Brahmin origins in ancient India who had long held a grudge against the Brahmin superiority and hence tended to reject the Brahmin claim that canons are absolutely sacred and are not to be questioned, leading to the Jain tendency to regard with suspicion all of the judgments that had by then been widely upheld as “truth” - a tendency that helps explain why Jainism espoused this particular seven-fold predication theory.