Jinamanjari 2002 04 No 25

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 44

Existence is the innate nature of a substance, (connected as this is) with qualities and various modifications of its own, with origination, annihilation and stability at all times.
II
According to Jainism, the nature of reality is dynamic and therefore the substance must evolve into qualities and modifications and must constantly undergo the triplicate stage of origination, annihilation, 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 non-soul, motion and rest which are all parinami or evolutionary, and having the characteristics of both bhava parinama and parispanda or kriya parinama, i.e. evolutions into being and evolutions into action while the principles of space and time are endowed only with bhava parinamas.
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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. Such separateness would suggest cleavage between the evolutes and the evolving reality reducing each of them in their separation to non-existence. Jainism makes its position clear by the common illustration of gold. Just as gold realizes its own nature as an existence through its qualities like yellowness, malleability, etc. and through its modifications or changes of form like an earring, 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 holds good of the conscious substance as well as of the unconscious.
With a view to obviate the difficulties inherent in the Nyaya Vaisheshika doctrine of arambhavada or the theory of emergence (arambha) or something new, so that the quality or modification which is arabhyate, or emerges, must be something new and different from the consequent causes. Jainism postulates the principle of parinama according to which the qualities and modifications are the selfevolutions of the substance having an identity of essence with it. On the other hand, however, Jainism points out that in spite of this metaphysical or real identity between the davva and gunas and pajjāyas, there is a logical and conceptual distinction between them. "The qualities and modifications," Kalipada Mitra states, "are both
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