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JAINA CONCEPTION OF SPACE
1. Introductory
Regarding primary material elements (mahābhūtas), there were two old views. One view recognized five mahābhūtas and the other recognized four mahābhūtas.
The five mahābhūtas recognized by the first view were ākāśa, vāyu, tejas, ap and prthvi. They possessed the five special qualities -ākāśa sabda, vāyu sparsa, tejas rūpa, ap rasa and prthvi gandha. Those who followed this view counted ākāśa as a mahābhūta with a special quality sabda. The Sankhya-Yoga, the Nyāya-Vaišeşika and the Prābhākara Mimāmsā accepted this view.
The old form of this view of five mahābhūtas was that the external material world, as also the human body, is composed of the five mahābhūtas. The Sankhya adopted this old form of the view. That is, according to the Sānkhya the five mahābhūtas are the material causes of all the material effect-substances (bhautika kārya-dravyas). So, for the Sankhya, ākāśa, along with other four mahābhūtas, is the material cause of effect-substances. The Vaiseșika differs from the Sankhya. The Vaiseșika maintains that only four mahābhūtas viz. Văyu, tejas, ap and prthvi are the material causes of material effectsubstances. Akāśa is not a material cause of any material effectsubstance. It is simply the substratum (dravya) of the quality sabda. This view of the Vaiseșika somewhat undermined the status of ākāsa as a mahābhūta. The Bhātta Mīmāṁsā gave the status of independent substance to sabda, thus putting at stake further the existence of ākāša as a mahābhūta.
The four mahābhūtas recognized by that other old view were vāya, tejas, ap and prthvi. Those who followed this view maintained either that ākāśa is a form of matter, produced from the four mahābhūtas or that ākāśa is non-material non-spiritual substance. The Theravadi Buddhists accepted the first alternative. For them ākāśa is samskļta, it is produced from the four mahābhūtas, thus it is a derived matter (upādāya rūpa)'. But the Vaibhāșika Buddhists, who too
