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66: Śramana, Vol 64, No. 2, April-June 2013
respectively by attaining modifications, without abandoning its own exclusive characteristic, absent in other substances(dravyas).
In Samkhya philosophy, the word dravya stands for Prakṛti-Puruşa, in Carvāka for four primordial elements- earth, water, air and fire, essential for evolution. In Nyāya-Vaiseṣika system it stands for the substratum of qualities and action (guṇa-karma-ādhāra) which is of nine types: earth, water, fire, air, ether (or space), time, direction, soul and mind. In the ancient Jaina Agamas like Uttaradhyayana, etc. the term dravya is also found to have been used in the very sense of 'Guṇānām āsavo" or substratum of qualities/attributes and also as 'Dravyam hi guṇānām samudayaḥ'" or clusters of attributes. However, Uttaradhyayana, in one of its previous verse says that it is knowledge which knows substance (dravya), quality (guna) and modes (paryāya). Patañjali, the author of Mahābhāṣya, used the term dravya in the said sense. To quote his words, 'we can break a jar and make a bowl instead, or vice-a-versa and we can break a bangle and make the ear-ring or vice-a-versa. But in the first case what persists in the midst of changing forms like jar, bowl, etc. is clay and in the second case what persists in the midst of changing forms like bangle, ear-ring etc., is gold. This clay in the first and gold in the second case is called Reality-substance (tattva-dravya). Vyasa in his commentary on Yogasūtra and Mīmāmsaka Kumārila Bhatta also in his Ślokavārtika, give similar interpretation of the term dravya. Vyasa explains with an illustration thus: 'We have to understand the three-fold mutation -of external aspects, of timevariation and of intensity-in the case of elements, organs, because there is distinction between the substance and external aspects. But in the strict sense there is a single mutation. For the external aspects (there) is nothing more than the substance itself. It is merely an evolved form of the substance amplified in the form of the external aspects. In such cases there is within the substance an alteration of the condition of present external aspect with regard to past,future and present time forms. There is no alteration of the matter. Just as dividing a plate of the gold there is an alteration of its condition, so
