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Matter
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among the Jaina's and has not its parallel in the system of the Vedic thought.
HOW THE CELLS GIVE RISE TO A BODY
We are afraid in our discussions at some length about the subtle Body, the Sūkşma or the Kārmaņa Sarīra, as postulated by the Indians, both Jaina and Vedic,----we may be charged with talking about a matter which is wholly conjectural. Accordingly, we may be pardoned if we attempt to show in the following lines how at least a presentable case for the subtle and potential Sarīra, as conceived by the Indians, can be made out without seriously contradicting the principles of modern science.
PRE-FORMATION THEORY OF SCATULATION
The ultimate material basis for the body of an animal is to be traced in the 'Cytula' or the 'Stem-cell' as it has been called, which again is the result of the combination of two separate cells viz: the male spermatozoon and the female ovum. The question arises how the two parent cells which consist in protoplasmic matter give rise to a Body with its varied limbs and sub-limbs. This is the fundamental and the most baffling problem in biology. The biologists of the 17th and 18th centuries represented by Hartsoeker and others put forward a doctrine which is called the Pre-formation theory. According to these thinkers, the complete animal body with all its parts was contained in the minutest form in the protoplasmic cell either of the father or of the mother (according as they attached greater importance to the paternal or the maternal factor), so that the growth of the full-fledged animal body was only an ‘unfolding' of what were already 'infolded'. The extreme protagonists of this theory e.g. Haller and others went so far as to say that not only was the Body with all its parts contained in the egg but that the embryo in its turn contained the ova of the following generation, that these again, the ova of the next and so on. This has been called the theory of Scatulation according to which the germs of the whole
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