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JAIN: THE CONCEPT OF PARYAYA AND JAINA WAY OF LIFE
origination, anii:ilauon, and permanence or stability. And the entire dynamic process of development is due to the mutual action and reaction between the four active principles, viz. the soul, the nonsoul, motion and rest which are all parināmi or evolutionary, having the characteristics of both bhava parināma and parispanda or kriyā pariņāma, i.e. evolutions into being and evolutions into action while the principles of Space and Time are endowed only with bhava parināmas. 10 It follows then that full completeness of existence is not realized either in a substance or a quality or a modification taken singly or separately but only in these taken together. For such a separateness would suggest cleavage between the evolute and the evolving reality reducing each of them in their separation to nonexistence. Jainism makes its position clear by the common illustration of gold. Just as gold realizes its own nature as an existene through its qualities like yellowness, malleability, etc. and through its modifications or changes of form like ear ring, bangle, etc. which all proceed from gold as a substance, even so any substance realizes its complete existence only in and through its qualities and modifications varying under variable circumstances. Existence is, thus, in the complete sense of the term, to be equated with a substance with all its qualities and changes of form which are themselves real. And this hold good of the conscious substance as well as of the unconscious.
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With a view to obviate the difficulties inherent in Nyāya Vaiseṣika doctrine of arambhavada or the theory of emergence (aramabha) or something new, so that the quality or modification which is ārabhyate or emerges must be something new and different from the consequent causes, Jainism postulates the principle of Parināma according to which the qualities and modifications are the self-evolutions of the substance having an identity of essence with it. But, on the other hand, Jainism points out, that in spite of this metaphysical or real identity between the dravyas and gunas and paryayas, there is a logical and conceptual distinction between them. "The qualities and modification", Kalipada Mitra states, "are both bhinna or distinct as well as abhinna or not distinct from the dravya. Metaphysically, they are non-distinct from or identical with the dravya, but logically they are distinct from it for without this logical distinction there is no other way of apprehending the dravya as dravya, guna as such and paryāya per se."11
Jainism conceives of substance as not only existent but also as
10. Ibid., 128-129 and 133-135 (Book II. 36-37 and 41-43). 11. Kalipada Mitra. "The Jaina Theory of Existence and Reality." Indian Culture (Calcutta), January 1939, pp. 322-323.
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