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SUTRA 23.
123 In recent years chemists 278 have been trying to find out the cause of this difference in taste. They have already investigated the cause of sweetness and have found that a particular arrangement of hydrocarbon elements is responsible for the sweetness. When work on this subject is pushed on further it is very likely that five different groups of elements which produce the five kinds of tastes mentioned above, will be discovered.
Coming to the subject of smell, there can be little dispute about the most arbitrary division : good and bad smell. We smell with the help of special hair cells at the back of the nose covering an area of about one sq. inch. In a dog the area of the cell is 10 sq. inches and in the case of a shark 24 sq. inches; hence their unusual powers of smelling. When the hair cells move by the impact of air reaching from outside, we perceive the smell. That smell is associated with every bit of matter is well illustrated by the phenomenon of 'Tele-olefaction.' An Instrument called the Electro-olefactory279 cell has been designed which is "much more sensitive than the human nose and can detect the smell emitted by a burning of a smalı rag 100 yards away." With its help smell of flowers, etc., can be transmitted along the wires or by wireless from one place to another over a distance of 65 miles. This apparatus has been further used to operate any automatic fire control, so that if fire breaks out, say, in a cotton godown, the smell of fire reaches the electro-olefactory cell which, with the help of certain electrically worked levers, opens a spray of water, thus extinguishing the fire. The students of Vais esika school should note that there cannot be any clearer proof than this of fire emitting some sort of smell, which Jain writers have recognized. (See pages 59-60 ante.)
Lastly five kinds of colours have been associated with matter : Blue, yellow, white, black and red.
Some people who make much of the seven rainbow colours are apt to be misled by the five colours of Jaina philosophy
278. Read the article "Taste and Chemical Constitution" by A. J. Mee, M.A., in Science Progress: October 1934. In this article the author has clearly recognized five kinds of taste. Says he "In taste there are only five general classes-sweet, bitter, salt, sour and insipid." This agrees quite well with the Jaina view.
279. See the paper read by. B. D. Virmani, Bombay, before the Science Congress, Calcutta, 1935.
