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Colour: An Innate Property of the Matter
Dr. Anil Kumar Jain
Jaina View about Colour
According to the Jainism, whole universe is made of six ultimate realities known as dravya. They are - Jiva, Pudgal, Dharma, Adharma, Akāśa and Kāla. Out of them, pudgal (matter) is the only dravya which is rūpi. One which possesses the properties of sparsa (touch), rasa (taste), gandha (smell) and varna (colour) is known as rūpi. Matter is the only dravya which is the object of sensuous cognition. Other five dravyas do not possess above four properties. That's why they are arūpi. The term rūpi does not mean visible, but perceivable and signifies the concurrent existence of all the four sense data.
Whether, the matter is in the form of skandha or it is in the form of paramāņu (ultimate particle ), these four innate properties, i. e., touch, taste, smell and colour, will always be with them. Here, we shall discuss about the colour.
Colour is an innate property of matter. These are five elementary colours blue, yellow, red, white and black. A physical body or matter must have atleast one of them. Matter may have more than one colour in the form of mixture, but it is not possible to have a matter without any colour.
As we have said earlier, a paramāņu also possesses any one of the five elementary colours. If we go into the depth of the colours, it may be infinite also. There may be a paramāņu with one unit of blackness, two unit of blackness, up to infinit units of blackness. In this way, there may be infinite types of colours. One thing which is to be noted here is that the intensity of a colour may vary but the colour itself of a paramāņu cannot be other than five elementary colours unless it is going to form a skandha by combining with the other paramāņu.
Two or more paramaņus of different colours when combine altogther, they form skandha. The colour of a skandha may be different from that of the constituent paramānus. It depends upon the intensities of different colours of the constituent paramāņus.
Light and Colour
Modern science explain the phenomenon of colours on the basis of the
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