Pravachanasara

Author(s): A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 94

Introduction
61
homogeneous-whole substances: Dr. Jacobi holds this as mark of antiquity of Jainism.1 To give space is the characteristic of Ākāśa; it may be relative when it accommodates other substances; empty space also is possible according to Jainism, and it is called Alokākāśa which extends infinitely beyond our physical world. Jainism and NyāyaVaiseşika agree in holding Ākāśa as all-pervading and eternal, but Jainas do not accept that sound is a quality of Akāśa. As with the Vaiseşikas, time is not one and all-pervading in Jainism according to which time has a sort of atomic constitution. The coördination of the ultimate units of matter, space and time is really interesting: anu and samaya are known to Nyāya-Vaiseşika systems, but pradeśa, as an unit of space, I am not aware of anywhere. That a substance is endowed with the trio of origination, destruction and permanence is peculiarly a commonsense view deduced from such patent and visible illustrations that a ring comes into existene after a bangle is melted and reshaped, still gold is there as a permanent substance. This common-sense view will have to be studied in the light of extreme philosophical idealism of Vedānta and Buddhism; according to the former the clay alone is real the individual names and forms being mere illusion, and according to the latter there is nothing as eternal behind the changing qualities which alone are perceived by us. The common-sense view appears to have been promulgated in same eastern part of India where Yājñavalkya enlightened Janaka on the doctrine of Atman etc. The realistic start never allowed any Jaina philosopher to adopt philosophical extremes.
2. SUBSTANCE, QUALITY AND MODIFICATION.-Substances (dravya), qualities (guņa) and modification (paryāya) are called the object of knowledge (I, 87). The substances which form the objectivity comprise the ego, the non-ego and the combinatory resultants of the two (I, 36). The substance forms the substratum of qualities and modifications, and it is constantly endowed with origination, destruction and permanence without leaving its existential character (I, 87; II, 3, 6, 13). It is the very nature of the substance to be amenable to these three states (II, 7); origination and destruction are simultaneous and interdependent, and are not possible in the absence of the substance (II, 8). This trio refers to modifications and qualities, and the [p. 65:) substance, as it forms the essential basis of the three, comes to be predicated of them at that moment (II, 9). The object of knowledge has always one or the other modification (I. 18). One modification originates and the other passes away, while the substance is permanent (II, 11). There is nothing as absolute production or destruction in this world: what is the production of one is the destruction of the other (II, 27). That condition or state (pariņāma), which in fact forms the nature of the substance is quality, which is a distinguishing mark too (II, 37-8). The transformation of one (form of the object into the other is the modification with its varieties of figuration (II, 60). The substance, quality and modification are existential (II, 13); as to the relation between the three they are non-separate (apsthaktva) and non-identical (anyatva): they cannot be
1 Outlines of Jainism p. xxxiii. 2 See pp. 16-7 of the Translation at the end, footnote 5. 3 Ibid. p. 18, foot-note 1.