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JAINA CONCEPTION OF SPACE
33 4. Units of Space (ākāśa-pradeśas)
A primary indivisible atom of matter is the ultimate unit of matter. And the space occupied by a material atom is the ultimate unit of space. It is called pradeśa (space-point).18 Though material atom is physically indivisible, it is amenable to mental division because it possesses ananta attributes or modes. As these modes or parts of a material atom are inseparable from it and can only be mentally abstracted from it, they are never found physically discrete in space. So, a part of a material atom cannot serve as the defining measure of the unit of space. The physically indivisible unit of matter, viz. atom being discrete and concrete (as opposed to its abstracted part) serves as a defining measure of the unit of space.
Though ākāśa does never accommodate two material bodies in the same spacepoints at a time, it, under certain conditions, can accommodate two upto ananta material atoms in one and the same spacepoint at a time. This phenomenon becomes possible because material atoms in their subtle states, are conceived as mutually nonobstructive.20 Again, this phenomenon definitely proves the fact that a material atom is subtler than a spacepoint.21
Akasa has ananta spacepoints.22 But this number ananta is fixed in the sense that there is no possibility of increase or decrease of even a single spacepoint.
The spacepoints are conceived as inseparable parts or avayavas of ākāśa. Thus ākāśa is an avayavi - astikāya?. Avayavas or parts (pradeśas) 'of.ākāśa are as much objectively existent as ākāśa of which they are parts. Were it not so, the two cities, say, Ahmedabad and Poona which like the two mountains, the Himavat and the Vindhya, occupy different locations of space, would, the Jainas affirm, tend to be at one location, which is an absurd position.24 They maintain that the partless 'ākāśa can never be a favourable receptacle for the objects having parts. Thus they contend that ākāśa too must have parts; for, when the table exists in space, it does not cover the whole space, as in that case other things cannot exist at all anywhere; the table exists not in all space but in that part of space where it does actually exist, leaving room for the other objects to exist elsewhere; all this clearly imply that space too has parts; space is an avayavi. To be an avayavi does not necessarily mean that it should be produced from its avayavas put together at some point of time.
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