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Contents of Physics - 1 : Heat and Light : 301
things illuminated like lamp20. It also leads to change of states like solidifying the milk by heating, liquefaction and solidification of earthy compounds and liquids, solidification of gaseous vapours, etc. It has also been pointed out that the air helps the heat of fire during burning. In contrast, light and glistening fire illuminates things, causes them to be visible and subject of knowledge.
Pujyapāda21 defines ātapa as hot light exemplified by sunlight. This is supported by many later authors. This suggests light energy is developed out of heat at some point giving visibility to the sources and surroundings. Nature of Heat
Upadhye22 has raised a point about the current obscurity of organic nature of the first four one-sensed beings in canons including 'agni or taijasa'. While on the one hand, he iş pleased with Jainism's antiquity on the animistic basis suggested by European scholars, he, on the other hand, is not satisfied with the idea of livingness in non-living physical objects like water and fire. He laments that even the great scriptural commentators have not been helpful to clarify these canonical and commonsense contradictions. He feels that association of fine microscopic organisms with these non-living entities may fall un-intelligible in case of fire and Atapa.
However, the gross forms of fire/heat available to us may be treated as non-living because of denaturation through its passage to us. Thus, we have two sources of fire/heat : (i) natural like sunlight, gemfire and volcanoes, etc. and (ii) nonnatural like burning of fuels, lamps and frictional fire. Many more sources of non-natural fires have been added in twentieth century. The basic question is not that of the sources but that of the nature of heat.
Despite vital force theory of origin, Jaina canons point heat as material in nature23. It is one of the finer forms of transformation of matter. As matter is basically said to be atomic in nature, heat must be atomic. Jainas, thus, have heat
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