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JAINA ONTOLOGY
of origination, destruction and premanence. There was no old Āgamic tra. dition of doing so and the new tendeney doubtless grew under the shadows of the Buddhist vs. Brahmanic controversy as to the definition of reality. Thus whereas the Buddhists were maintaining that reality is ever-changing and he Brahmanical philosophers were outright opposed to their view the Jainas came out with the suggestion that reality is ever-changing and yet permanent. It was an old Jaina position that dharma, adharma, akāśa, souls and atoms are so many permanent substances but it was always conceded that all these substances possess properties that might come and go; as for the composite physical substances the position was that their constituent atoms are permanent even if they themselves must originate and perish). It was in this background that one had to understand the Bhagavati contention that an atom, a soul, a nāraka was permanent from the standpoint of dravya and transient from that of pargāya or bhāva. Of course, the contention was not a recurring theme of Bhagavats and certainly it did not mean that everything whatsoever is a permanent substance possessed of ever changing pro. perties. But in the age of Umāsvāti it became a cardinal Jaina thesis that everything whatsoever is permanent from the standpoint of dravya and everchanging from that of paryāya; (as already hinted, in the case of composite physical substances the thesis amounted to maintaining that they are permanent in so far as their constituent atoms are so while they are everchanging in so far as their own properties are so — but the hint was always there that even composite physical substances are more or less permanent substances even if not absolutely permanent ones). Thus Siddhasena in effect suggested that a physical substance is absolutely permanent qua a physical substance, that it is more or less permanent qua a lump of clay or a jar, that it is absolutely transient qua a seat of its momentry properties. From this it also follows that two physical substances are absolutely alike in so far as both are phyical substances, that they are partly alike in so far as one of them is a lump of clay the other a jar, that they are not at all alike in so far as each is a seat of its own momentary properties. Using the terminology of the doctrine of nayas Siddhasena would say that from the standpoint of sangrahanaya physical substance is just a physical substance (better still, a substance), from the standpoint of vyavahäranaya it is a lump of clay or a jar, from that of rjusütranaya it is a seat of its momentary properties. That all this was not implied in the traditional doctrine of nayas can be gathered from a perusal of the Anuyogadvāra formulation on the subject - a particularly strong argument in support of such a view being that there was yet another naya viz. naigama of which Siddhasena just took no notice. And yet Siddhasena made out as if he was only amplifying the traditional doctrine of nayas. Since on Siddhasena's showing the sangraha and vyavahāra nayas conceded that a physical substance was a more or less permanent substance while the rjusūtranaya laid
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