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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
The tendency to externalise everything has also compelled the Vaiseṣika to postulate a God (Iśvara or Maheśvara) for explaining the creation and destruction of the changing world. This deus ex machina amounts to a confession of failure in evolving an intrinsically self-sufficient notion of reality.
A further anomaly arising from the mechanistic conception of ubhayavada in the Vaiseṣika metaphysics is the division of dravyas into eternal (nitya) or permanent ones and noneternal (anitya) or transient ones. The eternal ones are said to be primary or simple substances (nityadravyam tvasamavetam eva') and the non-eternal ones are said to be secondary or composite products derived from the simple ones (anityadravyaṁ kāryarüpatvad avayavasamavetam3). This assignment of eternality or permanence to one division and of transience or change to another one results, at any rate according to the Jaina and the Buddhist critics, in a theory of two worlds in one of which, permanence enjoys an uninterrupted or lonely existence, and in the other there is the play of change in evidence initiated in a perpetually alternating cycle of creation and destruction by God or Maheśvara. From among the residents of the world a further order of substances is singled out. This order is said to consist of soul (ātmā, including paramātmā or God), space
1 & 2. See NKB, p. 370.
3. In keeping with the mechanistic temper of the system the Vaiśeşika's idea of change does not signify any internal or dynamic transformation (pariņāma) in a product but only its 'change of place' (parişpanda). Cf. OPI, p. 233.
