Comparative Claims on a Single Page
A comparative philosophy examination asks students to compare Jainism with Nyaya, Samkhya, and Vedanta in 600 words. One candidate writes: "Jainism accepts the same four pramanas as Nyaya, with the addition of syadvada. Jain anekantavada is the same as Vedanta's maya because both say the world is not what it seems. Jain kaivalya is identical to Samkhya kaivalya because both mean isolation of the self. Jainism and Vaisesika both accept six dravyas, so their metaphysics is the same." The examiner has 60 scripts and must mark consistently. The rubric awards one mark for each correct comparison, two for each qualified comparison, and zero for a false identity. You are moderating the script and must explain your marks to the examiner, who is inclined to give credit for effort and for the neat symmetry of the four claims.
1. Evaluate each of the four claims as true, partly true, or false, with the correction.
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Claim one is false. Nyaya accepts four pramanas: pratyaksha, anumana, upamana, and shabda. Jain epistemology standardly accepts three: pratyaksha, anumana, and shabda, with shabda understood broadly as agama. Syadvada is not a pramana; it is a method of conditional predication. Claim two is false. Vedanta maya, especially in Advaita, is a principle of cosmic illusion or veiling that makes the world appear other than Brahman; Jain anekantavada is a realist doctrine of many-sided reality and standpoint-dependent predication. Jainism does not say the world is unreal. Claim three is partly true. Both traditions use isolation language, but Samkhya kaivalya is the purusha's isolation from prakriti in a dualistic framework, while Jain moksha is the jiva's release from karmic matter, retaining inherent jnana and darshana. The similarities are verbal, not doctrinal. Claim four is false. Vaisesika accepts six padarthas, not six dravyas: dravya, guna, karma, samanya, vishesha, and samavaya. Its dravya list has nine items, including earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self, and mind. The Jain six dravyas are a different list with a different theory of substance. The candidate has mistaken a numerical coincidence for a metaphysical identity.
2. Explain the criterion you would use to distinguish a qualified comparison from a false identity.
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A qualified comparison preserves both similarity and difference. It states the respect in which the two doctrines agree and the respect in which they diverge, and it does not use a shared word to erase a structural contrast. A false identity collapses the two doctrines into one, usually by seizing on a single term such as maya, kaivalya, or dravya and ignoring the surrounding system. For example, saying "both Jainism and Samkhya seek liberation from suffering" is a qualified comparison if one adds that Samkhya seeks the isolation of purusha from prakriti while Jainism seeks the removal of karmic matter from jiva. Saying "Jain kaivalya is Samkhya kaivalya" is a false identity because it drops the difference. The criterion is therefore not vague resemblance but explanatory fit: can the comparison predict what each system says about causation, the self, the world, and the path? If it cannot, it is a false identity. For marking, I would require the candidate to name the respect of similarity and the respect of difference. A comparison that does both earns two marks; one that names only similarity or only difference earns one; one that asserts identity with no difference earns zero.
3. Recommend marks for the script and one sentence of feedback that would improve the candidate's method.
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Under the rubric, the script earns two marks for the third claim, which is partly true and shows some awareness of isolation language, and zero for the other three, which are false identities. The total is two out of a possible eight. The neat symmetry of the four claims is part of the problem: the candidate has produced a balanced page by forcing each tradition into a parallel slot, and the parallels are verbal rather than doctrinal. The examiner should not reward effort in a way that reverses the rubric, because that would reward the very method the examination is testing against. The feedback sentence should be: "For each comparison, name one respect in which the two systems agree and one respect in which they differ, and cite the concept that explains the difference rather than a shared English word." A second, more specific note could point to the Vaisesika padartha list and the Jain dravya list as an example of numerical coincidence without identity. With that method, the candidate could convert the Samkhya claim into a qualified comparison and earn the higher mark, but the other three claims would still need reconstruction, not polishing.