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REALITY AND EXISTENCE
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itself is neither created nor destroyed. The eternality of substance is emphasized. The essential nature of clay remaining unchanged among its various modes is cited.
Thus, the 'core' of Existence, the 'entity that endures' is the Substance, and the term dhruva is made use of by the Jainas to refer to the aspect of identity. The main argument of the Jainas is that attempting to understand the changes that take place in a thing presupposes that the thing itself persists in spite of the changes. The changing modes of the thing are referred to as utpāda and vyaya, the terms respectively denoting ‘appearance and disappearance'. Umāswāmi defines sat as possessing origination, decay and permanence. The terms: modification, becoming, difference, discreetness, plurality, manyness, manifoldness, the occurrent are some of the epithets used in different contexts as synonymns of change (pāryāya) which point not merely to productivity (utpāda) but to destructibility (vyaya) as well. Similarly the terms substantiality, substratum, being, identity, non-disserence, continuance, unity, oneness, the continuant, statism, endurance and persistence are used as equivalents to the term permanence (dhruvat va).
In terms of the varied reference to Reality in the Jaina tradition, it is obvious, appearance (utpāda) and disappearance (vyaya) point to the dynamic aspect of Reality and endurance (dhruva) refers to the static aspect. It is also logical to maintain that to think of Reality bereft of even any one of the three aspects referred to above is symptomatic of a theoretical abstraction that philosophers have sometimes a tendency to indulge in. Nothing that is real can be thought of without the triple constituents of utpāda, vyaya and dhruva.
The Jaina philosophy of being may be analysed in a slightly different way also. The very assertion of the existence of varying qualities implies something that exists, something of which the existence of varying qualities is postulated. The Jaina point of view is that to speak meaningfully of qualities is synonymous with asserting the existence of a substratum, an entity which is at the base. The assertion of a substance is also implied in considering the changing modes, for the changes and the modes must be of some
6 Tattvärtha-Sutra, V. 29
7 See Y.J. Padmarajiah, Jaina Theories of Reality and Knowledge (Bombay: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal, 1963), p. 127
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