Concept of Paryaya in Jain Philosophy

Author(s): S R Bhatt, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 53

1 : The Concept of Paryaya and Jaina Way of Life Jagdish Prasad Jain "Sadhak" The world consists of things or substances. These have distinguishing qualities, which are peculiar to the nature of the thing. We may say that the distinguishing features of a substance are its qualities, which are peculiar to the nature of that substance, while the distinguishing structure of a thing is its Form, as Aristotle called it. The form, it is said, is the sum-total of the distinguishing characteristics of the thing at a particular stage of organisation or development which it has reached. The form, that is to say, at the stage in question, is the last determination of the thing in virtue of which it has reached that stage. But at that same stage, we are also entitled to think of the thing as substance, in respect of the next phase of organisation or development, which it may still have to undergo, i.e. a new Form, which it may assume by undergoing further changes and modifications; this new Form is superinduced upon or developed in a substance, which is already itself a combination of substance, qualities and Form, i.e. paryaya (mode or modification) in Jain terminology. Before discussing the Jaina concept of paryaya, mode or change or how change takes place in a substance and in what sense, a new form originates or is created, it is necessary to describe in brief the problem of change, i.e. whether change or modification does, in fact, take place in reality or that change is unreal, i.e. there is no change at all. We commonly think of the world as consisting of changing things which somehow remain the same things throughout and in spite of the changes that happen to them, so that we can say, "This is the thing which