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Matter
of the Indians is not gross air but is the material background of our tactile sensibility. And lastly, Ākāśa conceived as a material Bhūta is not even ether, a gross substance after all in an extremely fine form but is what makes possible our sensations of sound.
BHŪTAS ARE NOT BITS OF GROSS MATTER
The Guna's or the attributes, possessed by the Bhuta's, really imply that they lie implicit in the latter; in other words, the Bhuta's are conceived as ultimate substances which evolve or give rise to the various qualitative phenomena, e.g. colour, taste, etc. which are associated with the gross objects of our experience. The Bhuta's of Indian philosophy thus are not gross substances of matter in finer forms, as with the Greeks but are substances which are infinitely more subtle than the elements of the non-Indian thinkers and which may as well be looked upon as almost immaterial, being the barest background of the material qualities of colour, smell etc. that are met with in the gross bodies.
BUT
BACKGROUNDS OR POSSIBILITIES
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ARE PERCEPTIONS
It may be urged against us that our above contention is unwarranted. The Indian Bhuta's have been definitely said to be possessed of the attributes of colour, taste, etc. This clearly shows that the Indian conception of Pṛthvi is that it is a smelling substance, that of Ap is that it is a liquid substance and so on. It would thus appear that if the elements of the Greeks were gross matters in their finer forms, the Indian Bhuta's also were no less So, the gross sensible qualities of colour etc. being attributed to them. We venture to submit that this objection is founded on a misconception of the nature of inherence of qualities in a substance. It is true that if the material quality of colour, for instance, be found in an explicit form in a thing, the thing is bound to be gross. But the qualities of a substance may not always be explicit in it. Even then, the Indian thinkers do as a
SENSE
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