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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics.
THEORY OF CONTINUOUS MATTER
The above contention of ours that while the ancient Greek doctrine of matter cannot be reconciled with the results of modern researches, the Indian theory is not shaken by them, will find further support from a consideration of the nature of atoms. The atomic theory, as is well known, is based on the assumption that if we go on subdividing and analysing a gross material body, we shall at last come across infinitesimally small particles of matter which cannot be further subdivided and which are strictly discrete and separate from each other. These ultimate irreducible matter-stuffs are atoms. There have been some thinkers both in ancient and modern times who have not admitted the doctrine of atoms as indivisible reals constituting matter. To the opponents of the atomic theory, matter is continuous. Anaxagoras, for instance, maintained that there was no vacuum in space, that it was a complete plenum filled with matter which was a totally continuous substance. Descartes who denied the reality of atoms and who was on this point followed by Spinoza, contended that extension was the attribute of matter, so that matter was really an extended substance and extension was really being filled by matter in all its parts. In recent times, we have got the theory of matter of Helmholtz, who maintains that it is an incompressible and homogeneous perfect fluid which is continuous, so much so that it is devoid of all viscosity.
ATOMIC THEORY
A question of somewhat similar nature seems to have been agitated in ancient India. The controversies centred round the problem whether matter was infinitely divisible. The Nyāya-Vaiseșika philosophers, the Sarvāstivādins of the Buddhist Vaibhāșika and Saūtrāntika schools as well as the Jaina's maintained the doctrine of the real existence of the Paramāņu's or atoms. According to them, the process of subdividing matter cannot go on infinitely. They contended जलानलयोरपि गन्धरसादिमत्ता प्रतिपत्तव्या। रूपरसगन्धस्पर्शवन्तो हि पुद्गलास्तत् कथं-तद्विकाराणां प्रतिनियमः॥'
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