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The Samkhya-Yoga and the Jain Theories of Parināma
'If persistence, cessation and birth were, each of them, identical with substance of which they are predicated, then being identical with the same substance, all of them would be identical with one another. Thus, persistence would be the same thing as cessation and birth, cessation would be identical with persistence and birth, and birth would be identical with cessation and persistence. So the triple character is reduced to an identical single mode. And if, each of these modes were regarded as numerically different from the substance and also from one another, and if each of them were believed to be real, then again each of these modes would have triple character. An infinite vicious series would be inevitable, as each of the triple modes, would have another triple character and so on to infinity, unless the triple mode were severálly and jointly asserted to be unreal characterization. Either a single mode, in the place of the triple character, or an infinite series, or its unreaiity, is to be asserted. But, the Jain answers the critic, by asserting the non-absolutistic position. So far as persistence etc are regarded as identical with the substance, it is. legitimate that persistence and cessation and birth should be regarded as identical. And if attention is concentrated on the aspect of difference of those modes, from the substance, and from one another, then each of them would have a triple character. There is no reason for the infinite series, as difference is not absolute. The modes are identical with the substance only so far as the substance is focussed in the modes. The modes are not absolutely different from substance, as, in that case, the modes would not belong to the substance. The mode is a mode of the substance, because the identity of substance is focussed in it and, is not annulled. So a mode is identical with substance in that respect. To take an example, clay is transformed into a jar, and so the former is regarded as the cause of the latter. The jar is different from clay, no doubt, but the jar could not be a jar unless it were the same substance as clay. So difference and identity, both being inseparable moments in the relation, a mode as identical with the substance may have the same predicates with the substance, and as different from the substance may each of them
