A sage argued that all matter is built from indivisible particles — centuries before the Greek atomists are usually credited.
Substances are reducible to paramāṇu — the smallest, indivisible, eternal unit of matter — which combine (dyads, triads) to form everything perceivable.
— Kaṇāda, Vaiśeṣika Sūtra (Book 7, on aṇu/paramāṇu)
Atomic theory — matter composed of discrete fundamental particles.
A genuine, defensible parallel.
The Vaiśeṣika school, founded by the sage Kaṇāda (perhaps 6th–2nd century BCE), built an entire physics around paramāṇu: indivisible, eternal atoms that combine into dyads and triads to produce the visible world. It is a genuine, sophisticated proto-atomism, developed independently of — and possibly earlier than — the Greek atomists.
The honest distinction is what 'atom' means. Kaṇāda's paramāṇu is a *philosophical* atom, reasoned out to explain change and divisibility, with categories of substance, quality and action. It has no nucleus, no electrons, no experiment, and no quantitative chemistry. Modern atomic theory came from Dalton, spectroscopy and particle physics, not from the Vaiśeṣika. So: a brilliant conceptual ancestor of atomism, yes; the periodic table foreseen, no. The achievement is the *idea* that matter is ultimately discrete.