Ahimsa the Science of Peace

Author(s): Surendra Bothra
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 62

The story of life starts most probably at a period when earth was still cooling and completely lifeless. The clouds of water vapour that surrounded earth had condensed to form seas, but they were still hot. There was a crowd of volcanoes spewing ash and lava. The atmosphere was thin and consisted of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia and methane. There was little or no oxygen, and an abundance of ultraviolet rays reaching earth's surface. Electrical storms raged in the clouds, bombarding the land and sea with lightning.
What would have been the result of this mixture of natural elements? Experiments were performed in laboratory and it was found that complex molecules like sugars, nucleic acid, amino acids etc. were formed in the solutions.
With this knowledge we go back to the primitive earth and speculate the progress from then on. (It is worth noting that the origin and progress of life forms remains a subject of speculation, even in science, till date). With passage of millions of years the concentration of these building blocks of proteins increased and the molecules started interaction forming more complex compounds. There are possibilities of some totally new factors being brought down through meteorites. (This unknown factor may be the dormant stage Jiva, or life particles that, according to the Jains, are present in abundance throughout the expanses of the Universe.)
Sometime during this increasing complexity of compounds there appeared a substance, which proved to be most crucial for the further development of life. We today know it as DNA. It has two unique properties: it can act as a blue print for the manufacture of amino acids and it has the capacity to replicate itself.
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AHIMSA: THE SCIENCE OF PEACE Jain Education International