Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c6.14

c6.14

N. B.—The seventh tissue (the *Śukradharā kalā*,¹ sperm-bearing or reproductive) contains the parental *Vīja*, which is a minute organism ( समुदायात्मक ) deriving its elements from the parental organs, but distinct from the latter, and independent of their peculiarities, and it is the combination and characters of these constituent elements of the parental *Vīja* in the reproductive tissue that determine the physiological characters and predisposition of the offspring. We may call this *Atreya’s* germ-plasm theory, for it is an advance on the conception of “gemmules” and “ids,” but in *Atreya’s* version the “germ-plasm” is not only representative of the “somatic tissues,” but also generates and is generated by the latter. This mutual interaction of the “germ-plasm” and the “somatic tissues” is a distinctive feature of *Atreya’s* hypothesis, the value of which will be differently estimated by different schools of biologists.