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Eighth Chapter
JAIN RELIGION AND SCIENCE
PROPERTIES OF SUBSTANCE
In Jainism everything worth knowing is called dravya or entity. Dravya has properties or attributes. That which is linked with dravya is called attribute (guņa). The variations in guņas of an entity are called modes (paryāya). Those which have progressive variations from each other are known as paryāya or transformed state. Thus an entity is with attributes and modes (transformed states). Guņa is immutable and is always associated with the substance. But paryāya (mode) is mutable or is created and destroyed. For example, a person gives a bracelet to a goldsmith for making earrings. The goldsmith breaks the bracelet and uses its gold to make earrings. Here the paryāya known as bracelet gets destroyed and the paryāya known as earrings is created. But in both these modes gold remains same. Gold is not destroyed. Only the modes of bracelet and earrings are destroyed and created. This creation and destruction is called paryāya. Gold has remained unchanged. That which remains unchanged is called guņa (fundamental property). This is just an example to explain the terminology. In the same way after dying a man reincarnates as an animal. Here the paryāya known as human being was destroyed and that known as animal was created. But in both states the soul remained the same. This way every substance has guņas (fundamental properties) and paryāyas (modes or variants). In other words we may say that every substance is an aggregate of guņas and paryāyas.
The aforesaid details can be summed up into three attributes of dravya - 1. That which is sat or that which exists is a dravya. 2. That
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