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COSMOLOGY : OLD AND NEW
therefore a case of the processes of combination and disintegration following in rapid succession. Fig. 8 of page 46 is interesting. An alpha particle is shot into the nucleus of an atom of beryllium metal with the result that the shot is absorbed, beryllium is converted into carbon and the neutron is rejected out of the original nucleus. Here also the processes of combination and partial disintegration are playing their role. Many more such examples can be multiplied. As we shall see later the molecules are formed by the atoms by similar processes of division and union. Thus the use of the word pudgala for matter and energy fully justifies itself.
The Chief characteristic of the substance pudgala is that it is the subject of sense perception; it has a form, in contrast with the other five constituents of the universe which are without form. The physical properties of hardness, density, temperature and positive or negative charge are associated with it. It has one of the five tastes : sweet, bitter, sour, saltish or astringent; a good or bad smell and one of the five colours, black, red, white, yellow or blue depending upon the temperature. Not only in the gross form of matter these physical properties associated but the Jaina Acāryas have extended them to the ultimate particles of matter also. As mentioned on page 140, every paramaņu (electron or positron) has one of the five tastes, one of the five colours, a good or a bad smell and a positive or a negative electric charge. Matter is divided into six sub-classes : Solids, Liquids, Gases, Energy, fine karmic matter and extrafine matter consisting of the streams of the ultimate particles of matter. Until some sixty years back the classical physics of Newton and Galileo regarded energy as perfectly weightless and without any association with matter. It was the genius of Einstein who definitely proved that every form of energy has mass and that there is no difference between matter and energy but that of the form. It is really wonderful to note that this truth was already discovered several centuries ago by the Jaina philosophers. They regarded every form of energy as a manifestation of pudgala, and hence one form of energy could be intra-converted into the other. It is really interesting to see that, whereas in the history of modern science the nature of heat, light and electricity could not be elucidated for a long time, heat and electricity being regarded as fluids for several centuries, they were already known as modifications of energy
