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Matter
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taste and five kinds of colour are implicit in each and every atom. Every atom is capable of producing any colour, any taste, any smell and any touch. What then is meant when the Paramāņu is said to be of only one single taste, colour etc.? We think, here the nature of Paramāņu is considered with reference to its corresponding gross material mass. A Skandha or a molecular mass, as every one knows, can have only one taste, it cannot have all the five tastes at one and the same time. So, as regards smell, it is either agreeable or disagreeable, cannot be both. Similarly, with regard to colour, it is cither red, or yellow, or of any other colour and cannot be of more than one colour at one and the same time. And lastly, as regards touch, a material gross thing can have two i.e. a pair of such touches as hot and hard and so on and not all the eight kinds of touch all at once. It appears that when the atom is said to be of one taste etc. etc., all that is meant is that so far and so long as you consider the characteristics of a particular Skandha, you must attribute the same qualities to its constituent atoms. Thereby, however, the capacity of an atom to develop different characteristics in different Skandha's under different circumstances is not denied. When we have a particular Skandha, manifesting particular characteristics, we are to attribute only those particular characteristics to its constituent Paramāņu's; this does not mean tnat those Paramāņu's can on no account evolve different characteristics. While commenting on the doctrine that a Paramāņu has a single taste, colour etc. Professor Chakravarty says, “This description would naturally introduce qualitative difference among atoms and yet according to the author there can be no qualitative difference among atoms as they are identical material units”. He stops abruptly, creating an impression that we are here face to face with a manifest contradiction in the Jaina theory, a riddle which it is impossible to explain. The contradiction, we think, would disappear if we remember that an atom is said to be of one colour, one taste etc. only in reference to the gross thing of which it is a constituent part. A Paramāņu
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