Some Problems in Jaina Psychology

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Karnatak University Dharwar

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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
and extra-sensory experience. Research in this direction is both possible and necessary. This problem will be referred to in a later chapter in which extra-sensory perception will be discussed.
Sense qualities
Sense organs are instruments by means of which sense experience is possible. The senses are capacities of experience, and the sensible qualities which exist outside are objects of experience. For instance, the common element between the eye and the object is colour, and the common element in the case of hearing is sound. They are stimulations. The Jainas have given a psychological analysis of the sense qualities emerging from the experience of the various senses. As Radhakrishnan says, a good deal of psychological analysis is discernible in the division of sense qualities. 35 According to the Jainas, the visual sense quality of colour is classed into five types: black (krsņa), blue (nila), yellow (pita), white (sukla), and pink (padma).36 Young supposed that there exist three distinct sets of nerve fibers, one set sensitive to red, one to green and the third to violet. This theory has been expounded by Helmholtz. There are three primary colour excitations, and the mixture of these three gives different colour experiences. All fibres are responsive, in some way, to all waves, though the red fibres are excited by the long waves. Green fibres respond to those of medium length. Violet fibres are maximally stimulated by short waves. All colour experience results from these three simultaneous excitations based on the relative strength of the components in the stimulus of light. This is the Trichromatic theory. But Hering and Franklin have objected to this theory. They maintain that yellow and white are as primary as the three colour qualities mentioned by Helmholtz. Hering supposed that the primaries are to be arranged in pairs. There are three complex substances, one mediating white-black, another red-green, and the third responsible for yellow-blue. The white-black material is more plentifully supplied and is more readily excited than others. When activated, it gives purely achromatic brilliance and can be depressed in direction by black only through light adaptation and contrast. The other two substances behave differently, having their activity either depressed or augmented. The red-green substance yields red when 'torn down' by light, and green when built up. In the yellow-blue substance, depression produces blue, whereas augmentation results in yellow. The LaddFranklin theory represents, in a sense, a compromise between the trichromatic combination for mixture and the tetra-chromatic combination in its existence. It points out that there are five primary colour qualities, 37
35 Radhakrishnan (S): Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 309. 36 Tattvārthādhigamasutra, Ch. II, Sūtra 20. 37 Spearman: Psychology Down the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 199-200,