Concept of Paryaya in Jain Philosophy

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

Page 80

Concept of Paryaya in Jain Philosophy dravya. The transitory finite modes can only be understood and their essence or nature is deduced as effects of the infinite and eternal modes. They are in this sense dependent on the modes of higher order53. The Jaina seers are deducing the necessity of motion and rest as primary characteristics of the extended world and the world of thought with reference to dharma and adharma. They are appealing only to the strictly logical notion of a self-creating dravya conceived as an extended substance. They conceived the whole of dravya as one individual, the parts of which, (that is, all bodies) change in infinite ways without any change of the whole individual. In this highest order the individual covers the face of the whole universe and non-universe (Lokaloka). In the hierarchy of their system of modes it has the title of a mediate infinite (ananta) and eternal (sasvata) mode under the attribute of extension (astikaya). It has mediate because it is logically dependent on the immediate mode of motion and rest, which is the primary or logically prior feature of extension. It is infinite and eternal because of the fact that dravya as a whole conceived as a special system remains thus self-identical. This follows directly from the conception of motion and rest as the necessary feature of the extended world. These are the co-relations among universe, Reality, dravya and paryaya, but again the question has been raised that in the universe there are particular things and they all are interacting among one another; there are living and non-living, they have differences and how these all sublimate, so that the relationship between universe, Reality, dravya and paryaya may be smooth. They all may be collectively or one by one understood as follows - each particular thing interacting with other particular things within the common order of Nature, exhibits a characteristic tendency to cohesion and to preservation of its identity, a striving (conatus), so far as it lies in itself to do so, to persist in its own being. Particular things, being dependent modes and substances, are constantly under going changes of state as the effects of causes other than themselves, as they are not self-determining substances, their successive states cannot be deduced from their own essence alone, but must be explained partly by reference to the action upon them of other particular things. In the natural philosophy the differences between the living and