 Jaina atomists also regarded soul as a distinct kind of entity, although they held that material atoms can percolate into soul and affect it. Space was also treated as a distinct kind of substance (Mehta 1954). Jaina tradition claims to have been the oldest atomist system and to have inspired Vaiśeṣika atomism, although recent scholarship suggests that the reverse is true (Matilal 1977, 60; Thakar 2003, 7–8, 450).