Tattvartha Sutra

SR No.: 006796
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sukhlal Sanghavi, K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 596
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Tattvartha Sutra, & Tattvarth
File Size: 10 MB

Page 284

CHAPTER TWO
111
smallness of size.
Now vaikriya is subtler than audārika but it is grosser than āhāraka; similarly, ahāraka etc. too are subtler than a type mentioned earlier and grosser than one mentioned later. That is to say, the character of being gross and subtle is but relative. This means that a body-type is subtler than another--and the latter grosser than the former—in case the construction of the latter is looser than that of the former.
On their part, the looseness and tightness of construction depend on physical transformation. For the physical particles are possessed of a multifarious power of transformation; so when, even if small in quantity, they are transformed into a loose body they are called gross, and when, even if large in quantity, they are transformed into an increasingly tight body they are called increasingly subtle. For example, if we take a bean of lady's finger and a piece of ivory, both equal in size, then it will be found that the former's construction is relatively loose, the latter's relatively tight. Thus it is that even in the case of size being equal the physical stuff constituting ivory is greater in amount than that constituting lady's finger. 38.
The Quantity of the Originating—that is, Constituting-Stuff :
On the above understanding of gross and subtle it follows that the originating stuff of a later mentioned body-type is greater in quantity than that of an earlier mentioned one. But what that quantity actually is, is told in the two present aphorisms.
Those aggregates made up of atoms out of which a body is built are called the originating stuff of this body. So long as atoms lie separate from one another they cannot go to build a body. It is only the aggregates—which are of the form of an accumulated lot of atoms—that can do that. Moreover, even these aggregates ought to be made up of ananta atoms. Thus the originating aggregates of a vaikriya body are asankhyāta times greater than those of an audārika body; that is to say, the originating aggregates of an audārika body are made up of ananta