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Introduction
79
be a party to the formation of an aggregate. In the aggregate the one of higher degree absorbs the one of a lower degree. Thus the atomic aggregation is an automatic function resulting from the essential nature of paramāņus. 'A crude theory', Dr. B.N. Seal remarks on this átomic interlinking, 1 'this, of chemical combination, very crude but immensively suggestive, and possibly based on the observed electrification of smooth and rough surfaces as the result of rubbing'. The Nyāya-Vaiseşika position is different, according to which it is the will of God, the creating agency, that produces motion in the atoms; and so they (p. 83:] combine into dvyaņukas or binary atoms, three of which go to form a tryaņuka or tertiary one and so forth, till masses of earth, water, fire and air are produced. It is this theistic position that gives altogether a different turn to the Nyāya-Vaiseșika atomic theory. The later Nyāya-Vaiseșika ideas and hair-splitting discussions about dvyaņukas and tryaņukas have no place in Jaina exposition.
ATOMISM ELSEWHERE.-In the Vedāntic cosmology there is no place for real atoms, because their acceptance would not be consistent with the uniqueness of Brahman. The word aņu is known to Upanişads, but it stands for what is infinitesimally small and has nothing to do with the indivisible ultimate unit of matter. It is only some Buddhists that accept eternal atoms corresponding to four elements like the Vaiseşikas; Vijñānavādins, however, when they deny the reality of substance, cannot accept real atoms. The Jaina paramāņu is similar to the atoms recognised by Leucippus and Democritus in its basic conception that it is an eternal and indivisible minute particle of matter, that it is beyond senseperception, that it is made of the same substance, and that there are no four classes of atoms corresponding to elements; but the varying size and form of atoms with corresponding sourness etc. accepted by them is not possible in Jaina conception. The combinatory urge in atoms is due to their degrees of cohesiveness and aridness according to Jainism; but according to Democritus as explained by Epicurus, a primordial motion of atoms was assumed, which function in the Nyāya-Vaišeşika is fulfilled by the will of God. These similarities and dissimilarities do not by themselves lead to any chronological results, as they involve other wider issues, however, taking a constructive view of the Jaina atomic theory and comparing it with the Nyāya-Vaiseșika one, the Jaina view is much more primitive, and as Jacobi remarks the Jainas 'seem to have worked out their system from the most primitive notions about matter.'2
7. SYĀDVADA, OR THE THEORY OF CONDITIONAL PREDICATION.--A single substance is endowed with infinite modifications, and there are infinite classes of substances: to know one substance fully is to know the whole range of the object of knowledge; and this is possible only in omniscience. The sense-perception is graded and partial (I, 40, 48-51). A substance is endowed with qualities (or attributes) and modifications; though the substance is the same, it comes to be different because of its passing through different modifications; so when something is to be stated about a substance, viewed through a flux of modifications, there
1 The Positive Science of the Ancient Hindus p. 97. 2 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Vol. II, p. 199.
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