Book Title: Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics
Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Page 235
________________ 220 Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics principle. The theories of Darwin and Lamarck again, ascribing the appearance of ancestral acquired characters in the offspring to causes external to the germ-plasm, emphasise in a way the "Taxonomic” character of the evolution. Here again, we have seen how the Indian theory of the Sūkşma Sarira being drawn towards the germ-plasm suitable for its purpose, attempts to explain with some plausibility the phenomena of the resemblance in special features of the offspring to the ancestors. It is to be observed, however, that besides the general features common to the race and the peculiar features found in the ancestors as well as their offspring, the offspring is possessed of many characteristics which are strictly individual. What about this apparently “Ataxic” aspect of the evolution of an animal's bodily features ? To say that the development of these strictly individual features is due to pure chance, is unscientific. The explanation of these peculiar features by the extreme unholders of the theory of Epigenesis is that they are probably due to peculiar collocation of cells. Weisman, however, would not go outside the germ-plasm itself and would explain these peculiarities by a reference to his doctrine of amphimixis or peculiar blending of the paternal masses of germ-plasm. The fact, however, of these individual peculiarities being in complete harmony with the other general features as well as the so-called inherited characters points strongly towards a principle which at once accounts for the former as well as for the latter. Such underlying principle is the Sūkşma Sarira working through the germ-plasm and developing in a planned and definite way all the three bodily features in an animal, the racial, the ancestral and the individual, ---leaving nothing to chance or disorderliness. MEANING OF INDRIYA Sense-organs: Indriya or a sense-organ is so called as it is the Linga or the Karaņa i.e. the instrument of Indra, the soul, the omniscience of which is suppressed because of its association with Karma and which, thus finite as it is, Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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