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Reals in the faina Metaphysics changes, the substantial persistence which is perceivable in one indivisible point of time. Vartanā is a matter of inference.
सानुमानिकी व्यावहारिकदर्शनात्, पाकवत् । as Akalankadeva says. We put rice in a boiling pot and apply the usual fire, water, etc. Some time after, we find the rice in a boiled condition. This period of time which is taken in boiling is divisible into many parts and these parts are further divisible into smaller periods and so on, until we come at infinitesimal points of time which are not further divisible. Let us suppose that the period taken in boiling consists of 10,000 such indivisible points of time. We now turn to the boiling rice. What is it in each of these 10,000 indivisible units of time? The rice was raw but after the given period of time, it is found in a boiled condition. It must be supposed that in each of these 10,000 ultimate points of time, the process of boiling, a change, was ceaselessly going on in the rice; for, if in each such moment, change be not supposed to have been taking place in the rice, its boiled condition after the given period would be impossible. Expressed in a slightly different way, the rice is undergoing modification in each such moment. At the same time, we must also suppose that although in each of these 10,000 ultimate units of time there is modification in the rice, the essential nature of rice continues; otherwise there would be no boiled rice at all. So what we get in one particular ultimate moment is neither the pure substance of rice only, nor the modification of rice only, but the essential nature of rice in a process of change. The Jaina philosophers say that Vartanā is the perception of this content of an ultimate indivisible unit of time. This content is the continuity of the essential nature of a thing along with its modification.
The changes and modifications are real and the Vyavahāra Kāla or Phenomenal Time is connected with them, as we have already seen. These are Paryāya's or modes which are temporary. They must find their explanation in
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