Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 716

THE SIDDHANTA.
695
so on. It is true that water is not perceived with the nose, fire with the nose and tongue, or air with the nose, tongue and eye ; but it is also true that earth is known by all the senses excepting the ear, water by three (touch, taste and sight), fire by two (sight and temperature), and air by one (temperature) falone. We cannot, therefore, hold that earth is only endowed with odour, water with flavour, fire with colour, and air with temperature. Modern science has fully demonstrated the transmutability of elements, but no laboratory experiments are required to show that solid matter (e.g., wood) is convertible into fire or that water is but another form of vapour, a kind of gaseous matter. The so-called elements are the different forms of the one and the same substance, matter, called pudgala in the Jaina Siddhanta, because of the liability of its particles to become fused (from galanâ, to melt) among themselves as well as with souls. Owing to such fusion, different combinations arise in which certain qualities predominate, while certain others are more or less suppressed.
It is thus evident that the Vaisheshikas have no true conception of matter, which they unwarrantably split up under four different heads, as noted.
The Vaisheshika conception of ether as the source of sound is also unscientific, inasmuch as sound arises from the agitation of material particles, as may be fully demonstrated by experiment. Any elementary work on physics would furnish conclusive proof of this statenient. Even apart from scientific experiments, the plienomenon of echo suffices to denolish all such theories; for echo arises from the reflection of a sound-wave when