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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
in itself has a potentiality for any of the sense-phenomena. Thus in the technical terms of the Jaina epistemology, we may say that from the viewpoint of their Dravya or essential substance, all the atoms are similar and there is no qualitative difference among them but that from the viewpoint of the Parayāya's or modifications of that Dravya, an atom has only one taste, one smell etc., so that there is to be admitted a qualitative difference among the atoms'.
IMPORTANCE OF ATOMS
We thus draw our discourse on Paramāņu's or atoms to a close. These are in a sense most important of the nonpsychical substances. According to the Jaina's, it is the Paramāņu which by its motion from one space point to the immediate next determines the minutest instant of time; in other words, an instant or the shortest point or period of Kāla corresponds to the motion of a Paramāņu from the spatial point occupied by it to the immediate next. A Paramāņu is thus the measure of time. The quantity or density (Dravya) of a material mass as well as the extent of space (Kșetra) occupied by it, depend obviously on the Paramāņu's, the constitutive elements of the mass. The temporal order (Kāla) of the mass also is dependent on the Paramāņu's. And finally, the Paramāņu's through their aggregation and disintegration determine the varied modifications (Bhāva) of a material substance. For those reasons,
'While expounding the above view of ours, we are not unmindful of what Akalanka states in this connection. “The Paramāņu”, says he, “is to be known as of one taste, one smell. Why? Because it has no varied parts". He argues that while a peacock, as a gross thing, may have different colours, you cannot attribute more than one colour to the atom. Closely viewed, the assertion of Akalanka does not go against what we have stated. When he says that a peacock has varied colours, all that he means is that the different parts of a peacock's body have different colours. We agree with Akalanka in admitting that a particular colour, and no other colour, is to be attributed to those atoms which constitute that part of the peacock's body which bears that particular colour. But this does not mean that they are never capable of producing any other colour. Akalanka must have meant that when those atoms combined to make that particular part of the peacock's body, they developed only that one single colour, the capacity for producing other colours being allowed to remain dormant, rather, in abeyance, in them, for the time being.
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