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and radiation Thus according to Jain view the elementary particles are not fundamental units of matter but masses composed of innumerable (or infinite) paramāņus
THE JAINA
PHILOSOPHY
The totality of paramāņus in universe cannot be expressed by numbers It is infinite Since a paramanu can neither be destroyed nor created, totality of paramāņus in the universe is unchangeable This is comparable to the law of conservation of matter and energy which states that the total amount of matter and energy in the universe is constant and unchangeable Modification of this law is mooted as a result of some very recent observations and we shall revert to this point in the succeeding paragraphs.
Earlier, we had seen that colour, taste, smell and touch, etc, are intrinsic qualities of all material objects A paramanu being the fundamental unit of matter must also possess each of these qualities Thus a paramānu will possess the following five qualities
One (either good or bad) smell
One of the five elementary colours
One of the five elementary tastes and
Two of the four elementary sparsa viz either hot or cold and dry or unctuous
Thus in respect to the quality of sparsa alone there are four types of paramānus
1 Unctuous-cold
2 Unctuous-hot
3 Dry-cold 4 Dry-hot
And with different combination of colour. etc. we have 5×2×5×4= 200 types of paramănus. Now since the intensities of colour, taste, etc vary from minimum one unit to maximum infinite units, there will be infinite varieties of paramānus with different
