Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
be an eternal paralysis of Reality". The truth appears to be that neither Dharma alone nor Adharma alone is competent to bring about an order or system in the world. Both Dharma and Adharma "must be indispensable to the completion of the world" and "they are two different entities without which the system of reality would be impossible and incomplete", as Mr. Chakraverty himself admits. This, however, does not mean that although neither Dharma alone nor Adharma alone can bring about the ordered universe, it is the result of these two principles. counteracting the influences of each other. Such actions. and counter-actions of the two Principles of Dharma and Adharma (if we may be permitted to use the words expressing a dynamic sense) are no doubt necessary but the ordered and the systematised cosmos is primarily dependent on the essential nature of its constituents, the Jivas, and the Pudgala, as we have already pointed out.
Coming to Mr. Chakraverty's contention that Adharma is logically prior to Dharma in the construction of the system, we may point out that one is at liberty to contend the other way also, and say that the primordial reals may be conceived to have been originally in ceaseless motion and the ordered world is brought about by the subsequent functioning of the principle of Adharma in arresting this primeval motion, the functioning of the all-primary principle of Dharma. The ancient materialist Leucippus, for example, supposed the atoms to be always in motion and the ordered world to be a complex structure formed by these moving atoms finally stopping and impinging on one another. The modern theory of the world as evolving from a primeval mass of incandescent nebular matter revolving round its centre, by its gradual cooling down and slowing down of its motion, practically presupposes the priority of the principle of motion. At any rate, the contention about the logical priority of Dharma can claim as much plausibility as that about that of Adharma.