Pudgala
Matter: the one substance that can be seen, touched, tasted or smelt, from a single atom to a mountain, and the stuff of every body a soul has ever worn - and of karma.
The word is built from pud, to fill, and gala, to fall away: what combines and comes apart. Its unit is the Paramāṇu, which has one space-point and cannot be split; everything else material is a skandha, an aggregate, and aggregates run from two atoms to the whole infinite store. Colour, taste, smell and touch belong to it alone, which is why the soul, having none, cannot be seen.
The sūtra gives it more functions than any other substance: the body, speech, the mind and the breath are made of it, and so are pleasure, pain, life and death, because all of these come by way of the body. Karma is pudgala too, the finest of it, which is how something with no form can be bound to something with form. The Karma chapter draws that binding; this one only says what it is made of.
माप और संख्याएँ
| How many | ananta |
|---|---|
| Space-points | one, in an atom · up to ananta, in an aggregate |
| Form | yes - colour, taste, smell, touch |
| Extension | yes - an astikāya |
| Active | yes |
| Does | body · speech · mind · breath · pleasure · pain · life · death - 5.19–20 |