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26 : Śramaņa, Vol 62, No. 1 January-March 2011
substance. Since time occasions change, how can alokākāśa be considered a substance if time does not exist there and therefore does not allow change which is one of the elements defining substance!?
A further problem, which is one of the main philosophical arguments against the concept of a real time, is the seeming contradiction between temporal continuity and infinity on the one hand and the idea of discrete time units (kalāņus) on the other. This is a problem that pertains to space and matter as well since they all also consist of individual units. However, it seems that the paradox is somewhat greater when it comes to time since the Jaina theory of substances specifically points out that kalāņus are discrete and therefore, can not even be combined20 unlike other particles. Chakravarti Nayanar points to the contemporary solutions to the problem by Cantor, Peano, Frege etc, (Kundakunda, 2001, 86) which will not be addressed here due to the limited scope of this article.
Another problem refers to the modifications of modes, which occur in kalāņus as substances since kāla as a substance must by definition undergo change like all other substances. This question is of immense importance and is touched upon in the abovementioned gāthā 116 of the Pravacanasāra. Primary time has been defined as a support that occasions change in other substances in the Digambara as well as partly in the Svetāmbara tradition. As it is itself a substance and therefore by definition also undergoes change via the modification of its modes, there seems to be a missing factor, this being an underlying support for change that occurs in time as a substance and allows the modification of its own paryāyas. However, the solution is not that straightforward as setting another foundation would again need its own support and so on into infinity.
Therefore, some Jaina ācāryas have simply discarded the concept of primary time due to its problematic nature and denied it the status of a substance, describing it as a mode of other substances. A
