Jain Journal 1988 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 38

JULY, 1988
Jaina philosophy maintains that the capacities--colour, taste, smell and touch, exist as equal in each and every paramānu and can change into any form according to cause or various conditions. Even though they are equal in all paramāņu, the variousness of their transformation occurs because of the difference of conditioning materials. Similarly, according to Jaina view, skandha (molecule) formed by the combination of paramānus (atoms) is not any new material substance, as it is conceived in the Vaisesika philosophy. It is only one particular form out of the aggregation of paramāņus.
In the Vaisesika view paramānus are kūļastha-nitya (absolutely permanent)55 and this kūțastha-nityatā (absolute permanence) is proved by all means by maintaining the view that the produced and destroyed substances or quality and action (karma) are different from one another. But Jaina metaphysics admits parināmi-nityatā (permanence-in-change) of paramāņus like the Samkhya by rejecting kūtastha-nityatā of paramānus of the Vaisesika. It conceives all paramāņus as permanent in their respective individual nature and accounts for their parinami-nityatā by accepting skandha (molecule), guna (quality) and paryāya (mode), 56 i.e., karma (action), as being produced as a result of transformation of paramānus.57 Thus skandha is accepted as somehow non-different as well as different from them.
Jaina philosophy explains all gross and fine material creations (products) on the basis of the capacity of transformation of paramānus 58 and their combination and dissociation, just as the Samkhya 59 accounts for the production of the multiforms of the gross and fine material entities of the universe on the ground of differentiated combination of gunas (qualities)-sattva (essence), rajas (energy) and tamas (inertia or mass) from the Pļaksti one primordial Matter and its capacity of transformation.
55 Vaisesika-darsana by Kanada, adhyaya IV, ahnika 1, sutra 1 ; Nyaya-kandali by
Sridhara, pp. 78-80. 56 Bhagavati-vyakhya-prajnapti, sataka 5, uddesaka 7, sutra 213 ; sataka 14, uddesaka 4,
sutras 510-11 ; Tattvarthadhigama-sutra by Umasvati, prathama vibhaga, ch. V, sutras 26-27. Bhagavati-vyakhya-prajnapti, sataka 1, uddesaka 9, sutra 73 ; sataka 8, uddesaka 10, sutra 356; sataka 25, uddesaka 4, sutra 730 ; Tattvarthadhigama-sutra by Umasvati,
prathama vibhaga, p. 324. 58 Tattvarthadhigama-sutra by Umasvati, prathama vibhaga, 324. 59 Samkhya-pravacana-bhasya by Vijnanabhiksu, ch. 1, sutra 62 ; vide The Positive
Sciences of the Ancient Hindus, p. 29; Vyasa-bhasya on Yogasutra of Patanjali, pada IV sutra 14, p. 191.