Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

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STUDIES IN JAINISM
substance. From the aspect of paryaya, a thing is subject to birth and decay. From the aspect of dravya, it is permanent. Therefore permanence and change refer to two differerit aspects-change from the aspect of modifications, and permanence from the aspect of the underlying substance.
Jaina metaphysics does not recognize guņas without dravyas nor dravyas without gunas. Qualities without a substratum and a substratum without qualities are both empty abstractions and hence unreal. The qualities constitute the expression of the substance, and the qualities of one cannot be transformed into the qualities of another. Thus substance and qualities are identical, inasmuch as the latter exhibit the nature of the former. In spite of this identity between dravya and guna, they are distinct from each other. If there is no fundamental difference between substance and quality, dravya and guņa, there will be no means of apprehending the nature of dravya, except through its manifestation. Hence the two must be kept separate in thought, though they cannot be separated in reality. Dravya and guņa, substance and quality, may be said to be different from each other from one point of view and yet identical from another point of view. It is both bheda and abheda, different and yet identical. This bhedaabheda point of view is again peculiar to Jaina metaphysics.
In this respect, it is fundamentally distinct from the Vaiseșika point of view, which holds that dravya is a distinct padārtha from guna, and the two are brought together by a third principle called samavāya. Jiva is a distinct dravya, and knowledge, feeling, and conation, as properties of Jiva, exist independently of it, but the two are brought together by the intervention of samavāya. Jaina metaphysics completely rejects this view. Jñana and other properties of the Jiva or soul are inseparable from its nature, and hence the presence of properties in the Jiva is not the result of a combination effected by a third principle. If knowledge, feeling, and conation, the properties of the soul, were considered to be existing independently of it, then the soul without these properties would cease to be a conscious principle, a cetana dravya (conscious entity), and