________________
Colour : An Innate Property of the Matter
51
white colours means it reflects or radiates all the radiation of visible spectrum. Similarly, when we say a body possesses black colour, it means that body absorbs all the radiations of the visible spectrum. Or we can say, white and black are not the colours, but are something special. By upacāra we can say that white and black are also colours.
When white light from the sun passes through a prism, it gives a spectrum of seven main colours. Are these seven colours different from the five primary colours of the paramánu? Light itself is a skandha and whatever we see is nothing but a skandha and not a paramānu. When we see number of colours, it means we are seeing number of colours of skandha in the form of light which is being reflected from the body. The colours of a composite body (skandha ) would thus be determined by the resultant of the frequencies of its components.
Now we can conclude that the smallest possible building block of matter (i.e., paramānu ) will have any one of the three colours, i.e., blue, yellow and red. Two colours, i.e., white and black are said by upacāra. But a skandha may have number of colours or it may be colourless also. It depends upon the colours of their constituent paramānus. Hence, whatever is being said about five colours of matter in Jainism is true with respect to paramāņu only.
*Assistant Director ( Reservoir ), O. N. G. C.,
Ankaleshvar - 393 010 ( Gujarat ).
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
