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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
marks a transition or evolution from an anterior manifold entity to a more inclusive or less inclusive posterior entity. It is conditioned by the determinate factors-external and internal within the fourfold range of the dravya (the material factor), the kṣetra (the spatial location), the kala (the temporal reference) and the bhava (the intrinsic nature), governing the context of the causal occurrence concerned. It is not traceable to any one of these factors singly but arises from the totality of all the factors prevailing in the causal setting from which a new entity emerges. Besides imprinting a certain distinctiveness or individuality upon the entities and events in the universe the presence of this factor, viz., jātyantaratva, saves the reality from becoming a universal mass of mere being or a conglomeration of incommunicable atomistic particulars, or a mere conjunction of such being and such particulars in a warring medium miscalled a real.
Briefly, the Jaina answer to the problem of the nature of reality-the problem which has been so far dealt with in course of the four questions-is that everything is a manifold entity, or an identity-in-differents, with an imprint of individuality in it, and that the world is a vast society of such entities which act and react upon one another in their ceaseless process of causal transformations.
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