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382 : Scientific Contents in Prākrta Canons
for the livingness. Every living being develops the above vitalities depending on its sensory development until all of them are fully functional. The living is, then, called completioned. In case of many living beings, this may not be so and they die before completions. Such beings are called non-completioned with respect to body or senses. However, the canons indicate that it takes about 48 minutes for this completion process. The quantum of livingness is also guessed by this completion process.
This gradual development has six stages. Firstly, the living or embryo ( i ) takes food for building and running life. Food causes (ii) body to develop which results in development of (iii) physical and conceptual senses depending on the class of livingness. When senses develop, (iv) respiration (v) speech and (vi) mind or brain also appear. Those living beings with mind are called fully completioned. It is assumed that all these stages start nucleating simultaneously but they develop in a sequence in about 48 minutes. These six stages are collectively known as completions or paryāptis. Dhavalā 62 mentions that these are the causes of different vitalities. It defines them as the formation or perfection of different organs or energetic mattergic aggregates of the body which has been modified as the cause of such formations. Pūjyapāda and Akalanka also give similar definition to that of Dhavalā. But later on, many authors presumed it to be an acquirement of energy for these formations. This seems to be a cause-effect formalisation,
There are six completions covering each of the above stages - (i) food, (ii) body, (iii) senses, (iv) respiration, (v) speech, (vi) mind. It is seen that these six correspond to nine of the vitalities as shown in Table 7. The vitality of age may be said to be the resultant of these completions. Like the vitalities, the lowest living ones have four completions in appearance. Higher ones show all the six as shown in Table 5. Some canons63 mention five completions by combining V and Vi state.
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