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Biology in Jaina Treatise on Reals
contactile mechanism as one does not observe direct contact between the eye and the object. However, it is now taken that the word 'non' (A-) should mean here an indirect contact which is there through the way light travels and reaches
the eye. 6.
The objects of senses produce different types of specific sensations through extero-receptors. They could lead to different types of feelings and volitions causing karmic bondings.
7.
This explanatory indicates four very important scientific statements about which the Vaiseṣika system had differing opinions :
(i)
The properties of touch, taste, smell and colour/shape do exist in every material entity simultaneously whether in a perceptible form or otherwise. That is why, they have been referred to by a single term of 'tangible' (Rupi) in aphorism 5.5 later. The co-existence has been not only logically proved here but it is also verified by observations. The case of air possessing all the four attributes is noted in this connection.
(ii) Many statements refer to some observed physical changes in states of matter such as (a) change of solid into liquid (by heating) (b) change of liquid into solid (water-ice, by cooling) and (c) change of gas to solid (fire-flames depositing soot on walls).
(iii) The touch etc. are inferred in fine real or ideal atoms too as they are observed in their gross effects.
(iv) The sense objects like colour and hearing are properties of light and sound. These are now taken to be energies. However, this aphorism points them to be material or mattergic in nature.
8. All these objects of senses have different varieties which are detailed in chapter 5 later.
It has been said that the mind has no fixed location. Hence, it is not a sense. Now, it has to be enquired whether it serves consciousness. In fact, it serves it as the senses cannot function without it. Is this the only use of mind? The next aphorism 2.21 mentions another use of mind also:
Śrutam-anidriyasya
2.21
The scriptural or vocable knowledge is the object of mind.
1.
The object of scriptural or vocable knowledge is called scripture. This is the object of mind. The soul tends to operate in the objects of this knowledge with the help of mind on the destruction-cum-subsidence of the vocable knowledge-obscuring karma.
Alternatively, the scriptural knowledge is the scripture itself. This is the object of mind as it is acquired through the agency of mind. This function of mind does not involve the senses or their functions. It is independently effected by mind.
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