________________
A SOURCE-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
247
present the changing modes. Similarly, a philosophy which gives exclusive importance to the flux cannot ignore a thing that changes. In this sense, the Naiyayikas considered the perceptible objects as impermanent and the Buddhists considered everything as fleeting, as a vast continuum.
The modern scientific view of reality accepts the fact of transformation. It has been suggested that nothing is destroyed, it is only that an object gets transformed. For instance, a candle burns, but in its process of burning the substance of the candle is not destroyed. It is transformed into some other element.
Similarly, we find transformation of water into a different form like ice and water, the gases like hydrogen and oxygen. As we are aware, water is formed through the combination of hydrogen and oxygen in a definite proportion of 2:1. By the process of disintegration, the hydrogen and the oxygen can be separated of the water, and water expresses itself in the form of gases, of hydrogen and oxygen. This view is supported by actual scientific experiments.
Modern science has shown that matter and energy are mutually convertible. The accepted principle of conservation of matter and energy has been a primary principle in the science of Physics and Chemistry. Therefore, matter and energy are convertible and
conservable.
From the stand-point of Syādvāda Jainas affirm that a thing is never destroyed. That which is not, never comes into being. There is nothing which is free from the modes of coming into being and destruction. Substance has the modes of origination and destruction. Therefore, every substance has its modes. A substance without modes cannot exist, and modes must have a substance for its substratum. Therefore, the Jainas maintain that substance and modes are both real. In this world, there is nothing which is purely permanent without modes and there is no change which has not got a thing as a substratum of change. For instance, the jīva is a substance, but it expresses itself the empirical world in its various modifications and states in diffe
1. General Chemistry by Finus Pauling, pp. 4 and 5
2.
Pañcāstikaya-15
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
