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THE JAINA TH11 OSOPHY
BC The Jain doctrine of paramūnu is undoubtedly much more ancient than the Greck aiomists Bhag. wāna Pārsvanath (B C 877-777) and Bhagwăna Mahāvira (B C 599-527) propounded the paramanu as the ultimate indivisiblc origin of matter and the Jain canons Vialapannal (Bhagrali sūra) and Thānānga Sill"' contain claboratc and detailed discussions on the nature, structure and behaviour of matter in general and paramānu in particular
STRUCTURE OF ATOM-ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
Atoms of Democritus were all of the same substance but had different sizes and shapes They were eternally unchanging (Parmenidian), impenetrable and indivisible Atoms themselves had neither colour ror smell nor taste, the sensuousness of the matenal objects being produced by the motion and arrangement of atoms in space "Swect and bitter, cold and warm as well as all the colours, all these things exist but in opinion and not in reality, what really exists are unchangeable particles, atoms and their motions in empty space" wrote Democritus
We now know that the objects which were referred to as 'atoms' historically and later during the revival of science in seventeenth century, are not indivisible units of matter According to the modern science the atom of a chemical element is rather a complicated system of smaller units such as protons, neutrons, electrons, etc which are now called elementary particles The number of such elementary particles has now become twenty
It has been established beyond doubt that atoms of various chemical elements are mechanical systems very much similar to our solar system, with a number
