Jaina Gazette 1930 03

Author(s): Ajitprasad, C S Mallinath
Publisher: Jaina Gazettee Office

Page 7

THE JAINA GAZETTE
It thus appears that the Indian conception of Paramanu is essentially different from the Greek idea regarding an Atom. While the Greek Atom is but an infinitesimally small bit of Matter, impenetrable and extended-the Indian Paramanu like the modern scientist's Atom is primarily a geometrical point in space. Accordingly, the Ap' of the Indian philosophers is not correctly understood, if it be identified with the Water of Thales. Water is a compound substance and the Greek philosopher was wrong in looking upon it as the primordial Element. We venture to think that the Ap of Indian philosophy is a forcefor potentiality which accounts for the Rasa, liquidness or taste of a thing. And so about the other Bhutas or Dhatus. All of them are like the mathematical centres or seats of potences, explaining the gross material phenomena which are the objects of our perception. They are neither gross matters, as we ordinarily suppose nor infinitesimally smail bits of extended gross matters, as the early Greeks supposed the Atoms to be. In a sense, the Bhutas of Indian philosophy seem to be subtler than the Elements of modern science. The Elements produce material phenomena which are perceived by our senses. The Bhutas may be understood even to go beyond and permeate these Elements of modern science and explain the genesis of the material phenomena arising from them. The Bhutas are ultimate principles which in-form every Element of modern science. It is of course not denied that one Element is different from the other but all the Elements are similar in this respect that their products are variously perceptible by our senses. This similarly points to the Bhuta-potences underlying the Elements and regulating their products and phenomena.
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At any rate, if, as many scientists suspect, many of what we call Elements may be but compounds which we have not succeeded in decomposing and if the Elemental Atoms accepted by modern chemistry may probably be molecules made up of still more ultimale atoms,-the Bhutas were meant and understood as something like such primordial Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat