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Classification of Matter
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the part of its quality. There is the degree of the capacity in the characteristics of Matter--colour, taste, smell and touch. As for example, blackness in black coloured matters is not equal in all of them. Some one is of onefold blackness, i, e, the lightest blackness in comparison with which there cannot be any lightest black colour-indivisible part of blackness which is unitary; some may be numerablefold black; some may be innumerablefold black and some may be infinitefold black. This degree of qualities exist in both ultimate atoms and molecules. In this way Matter has been classified into infinite groups from the points of view of the degree of the parts of its qualities --colours, tastes, smells and touches.
There are also infinite classes of Matter with regard to its modes. Matter is subject to modification on account of the process of combination and dissociation. Matter undergoes modifications by the process of integration into the forms of colour, taste, smell, touch and shape and thus it assumes vyanjanaparyāyas, (periodic modifications.) From the point of view of the these infinite modes, Matter has been classified into infinite groups, as for instance, sound, heat, light, darkness, water, earth, cloud, etc. The classification of Pudgala (Mattar) into infinite groups from the points of view of jāti (category), part of quality (gunāmśa) and mode or modification is comparable to the analysis of matter of the physical sciences from the point of view of subject (substance), predicate (qua-- lity) and relations (modes).
1. Jaina Padārtha-vijñāna men Pudgala, pp. 41-49 2. Ibid., p. 50.
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