smallest amount of change—viz. that of an atom of its own amount of space. Now here the appearance is called the dharma, and that particular arrangement of atoms or guṇas which is the basis of the particular appearance is called the dharmin. The change of appearance is therefore called the dharma-pariṇāma.[35] Again this change of appearance can be looked at from two other aspects which though not intrinsically different from the change of appearance have their own special points of view which make them remarkable. These are _lakshaṇa-pariṇāma_ and _avasthā-pariṇāma_. Taking the particular collocation of atoms in a body for review, we see that all the subsequent changes that take place in it exist in it only in a latent way in it which will be manifested in future. All the previous changes of the collocating atoms are not also lost but exist only in a sublatent way in the particular collocation of atoms present before us. For the past changes are by no means destroyed but are preserved in the peculiar and particular collocation of atoms of the present moment. For had not the past changes taken place, the present could not appear. The present had held itself hidden in the past just as the future is hidden within the present. It therefore only comes into being with the unfolding of the past, which therefore exists only in a sublatent form in it. It is on account of this that we see that a body comes into being and dies away. Though this birth or death is really subsumed the change of appearance yet it has its own special aspect, on account of which it has been given a separate name as lakshaṇa-pariṇāma. It considers the three stages of an appearance—the unmanifested when it exists in the future, the manifested moment of the present, and the past when it has been manifested—lost to view but preserved and retained in all the onward stages of the evolution. Thus when we say that a thing has not yet come into being, that it has just come into being, and that it is no longer, we refer to this lakshaṇa-pariṇāma which records the history of the thing in future, present and past, which are only the three different moments of the same thing according to its different characters, as unmanifested, manifested and manifested in the past but conserved.