A History of Indian Philosophy Part 46

The diverse points of difference between the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist logic require to be dealt with in a separate work on Indian logic and can hardly be treated within the compa.s.s of the present volume.

It is interesting to notice that between the _Vatsyayana [email protected]_ and the Udyotakara's _Varttika_ no Hindu work on logic of importance seems to have been written: it appears that the science of logic in this period was in the hands of the Jains and the Buddhists; and it was [email protected]'s criticism of Hindu Nyaya that roused Udyotakara to write the _Varttika_. The Buddhist and the Jain method of treating logic separately from metaphysics as an independent study was not accepted by the Hindus till we come to [email protected]'a, and there is probably only one Hindu work of importance on Nyaya in the Buddhist style namely _Nyayasara_ of Bhasarvajna. Other older Hindu works generally treated of

[Footnote 1: See _Indian Logic Medieval School_, by Dr S.C. [email protected]@na, for a bibliography of Jain and Buddhist Logic.]

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inference only along with metaphysical and other points of Nyaya interest [Footnote ref 1].

The main doctrine of the [email protected] Philosophy [Footnote ref 2].

The [email protected] having dismissed the doctrine of momentariness took a common-sense view of things, and held that things remain permanent until suitable collocations so arrange themselves that the thing can be destroyed. Thus the jug continues to remain a jug unless or until it is broken to pieces by the stroke of a stick. Things exist not because they can produce an impression on us, or serve my purposes either directly or through knowledge, as the Buddhists suppose, but because existence is one of their characteristics. If I or you or any other perceiver did not exist, the things would continue to exist all the same.

Whether they produce any effect on us or on their surrounding environments is immaterial. Existence is the most general characteristic of things, and it is on account of this that things are testified by experience to be existing.

As the [email protected] depended solely on experience and on valid reasons, they dismissed the [email protected] cosmology, but accepted the atomic doctrine of the four elements (_bhutas_), earth ([email protected]_), water (_ap_), fire (_tejas_), and air (_marut_). These atoms are eternal; the fifth substance (_akas'a_) is all pervasive and eternal.

It is regarded as the cause of propagating sound; though all-pervading and thus in touch with the ears of all persons, it manifests sound only in the ear-drum, as it is only there that it shows itself as a sense-organ and manifests such sounds as the man deserves to hear by reason of his merit and demerit. Thus a deaf man though he has the akas'a as his sense of hearing, cannot hear on account of his demerit which impedes the faculty of that sense organ [Footnote ref 3]. In addition to these they admitted the existence of time (_kala_) as extending from the past through the present to the

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[Footnote 1: Almost all the books on Nyaya and [email protected] referred to have been consulted in the writing of this chapter. Those who want to be acquainted with a fuller bibliography of the new school of logic should refer to the paper called "The History of Navya Nyaya in Bengal," by Mr.

Cakravartti in _J.A.S.B._ 1915.]

[Footnote 2: I have treated Nyaya and [email protected] as the same system.

Whatever may have been their original differences, they are regarded since about 600 A.D. as being in complete agreement except in some minor points. The views of one system are often supplemented by those of the other. The original character of the two systems has already been treated.]

[Footnote 3: See _Nyayakandali_, pp. 59-64.]

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endless futurity before us. Had there been no time we could have no knowledge of it and there would be nothing to account for our time-notions a.s.sociated with all changes. The [email protected] did not admit the existence of any real time; to them the unit of kala is regarded as the time taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of s.p.a.ce. It has no existence separate from the atoms and their movements. The appearance of kala as a separate ent.i.ty is a creation of our buddhi _([email protected]) as it represents the order or mode in which the buddhi records its perceptions. But kala in [email protected] is regarded as a substance existing by itself. In accordance with the changes of things it reveals itself as past, present, and future. [email protected] regarded it as past, present, and future, as being the modes of the const.i.tution of the things in its different manifesting stages of evolution _(adhvan)_. The astronomers regarded it as being clue to the motion of the planets.

These must all be contrasted with the [email protected] conception of kala which is regarded as an all-pervading, partless substance which appears as many in a.s.sociation with the changes related to it [Footnote ref l].

The seventh substance is relative s.p.a.ce _(dik)_. It is that substance by virtue of which things are perceived as being on the right, left, east, west, upwards and downwards; kala like dik is also one. But yet tradition has given us varieties of it in the eight directions and in the upper and lower [Footnote ref 2]. The eighth substance is the soul _(atman)_ which is all-pervading. There are separate atmans for each person; the qualities of knowledge, feelings of pleasure and pain, desire, etc. belong to _atman_. Manas (mind) is the ninth substance. It is atomic in size and the vehicle of memory; all affections of the soul such as knowing, feeling, and willing, are generated by the connection of manas with soul, the senses and the objects. It is the intermediate link which connects the soul with the senses, and thereby produces the affections of knowledge, feeling, or willing. With each single connection of soul with manas we have a separate affection of the soul, and thus our intellectual experience is conducted in a series, one coming after another and not simultaneously. Over and above all these we have Isvara. The definition

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[Footnote 1: See _Nyayakandali,_ pp. 64-66, and _Nyayamanjari_, pp.

136-139. The [email protected] sutras_ regarded time as the cause of things which suffer change but denied it of things which are eternal.]

[Footnote 2: See _Nyayakandali,_ pp. 66-69, and _Nyayamanjari_, p. 140.]

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of substance consists in this, that it is independent by itself, whereas the other things such as quality ([email protected]_), action (_karma_), sameness or generality (_samanya_), speciality or specific individuality ([email protected]_) and the relation of inherence (_samavaya_) cannot show themselves without the help of substance (_dravya_). Dravya is thus the place of rest (_as'raya_) on which all the others depend ([email protected]_).

Dravya, [email protected], karma, samanya, [email protected], and samavaya are the six original ent.i.ties of which all things in the world are made up [Footnote ref 1].

When a man through some special merit, by the cultivation of reason and a thorough knowledge of the fallacies and pitfalls in the way of right thinking, comes to know the respective characteristics and differences of the above ent.i.ties, he ceases to have any pa.s.sions and to work in accordance with their promptings and attains a conviction of the nature of self, and is liberated [Footnote ref 2]. The [email protected] is a pluralistic system which neither tries to reduce the diversity of experience to any universal principle, nor dismisses patent facts of experience on the strength of the demands of the logical coherence of mere abstract thought. The ent.i.ties it admits are taken directly from experience. The underlying principle is that at the root of each kind of perception there must be something to which the perception is due. It cla.s.sified the percepts and concepts of experience into several ultimate types or categories (_padartha_), and held that the notion of each type was due to the presence of that ent.i.ty. These types are six in number--dravya, [email protected], etc. If we take a percept "I see a red book," the book appears to be an independent ent.i.ty on which rests the concept of "redness" and "oneness," and we thus call the book a substance (_dravya_); dravya is thus defined as that which has the characteristic of a dravya (_dravyatva_). So also [email protected] and karma. In the subdivision of different kinds of dravya also the same principle of cla.s.sification is followed. In contrasting it with [email protected] or Buddhism we see that for each unit of sensation (say

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[Footnote 1: _Abhava_ (negation) as dependent on bhava (position) is mentioned in the [email protected] sutras_. Later Nyaya writers such as Udayana include _abhava_ as a separate category, but S'ridhara a contemporary of Udayana rightly remarks that abhava was not counted by Pras'astapada as it was dependent on bhava--"_abhavasya [email protected] bhavaparatantryat na tvabhavat_." _Nyayakandali_, p. 6, and [email protected]@navali_, p. 2.]

[Footnote 2: "_Tattvato [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]@su [email protected]'anat viraktasya [email protected] atmajnasya tadarthani karmanyakurvatah tatparityagasadhanani [email protected] [email protected] upadadanasya [email protected] [email protected]@[email protected] sati paripakvatmajnanasyatyantikas'ariraviyogasya bhavat._" _Ibid._ p. 7.]

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whiteness) the latter would admit a corresponding real, but [email protected] would collect "all whiteness" under the name of "the quality of white colour" which the atom possessed [Footnote ref l].

They only regarded as a separate ent.i.ty what represented an ultimate mode of thought. They did not enquire whether such notions could be regarded as the modification of some other notion or not; but whenever they found that there were some experiences which were similar and universal, they cla.s.sed them as separate ent.i.ties or categories.

The six Padarthas: Dravya, [email protected], Karma, Samanya, [email protected], Samavaya.

Of the six cla.s.ses of ent.i.ties or categories (_padartha_) we have already given some account of dravya [Footnote ref 2]. Let us now turn to the others. Of the qualities ([email protected]_) the first one called _rupa_ (colour) is that which can be apprehended by the eye alone and not by any other sense. The colours are white, blue, yellow, red, green, brown and variegated (_citra_). Colours are found only in [email protected], ap and tejas. The colours of ap and tejas are permanent (_nitya_}, but the colour of [email protected] changes when heat is applied, and this, S'ridhara holds, is due to the fact that heat changes the atomic structure of [email protected] (earth) and thus the old const.i.tution of the substance being destroyed, its old colour is also destroyed, and a new one is generated. Rupa is the general name for the specific individual colours. There is the genus _rupatva_ (colourness), and the rupa [email protected] (quality) is that on which rests this genus; rupa is not itself a genus and can be apprehended by the eye.

The second is _rasa_ (taste), that quality of things which can be apprehended only by the tongue; these are sweet, sour, pungent ([email protected]_), astringent ([email protected]) and bitter (tikta). Only [email protected] and ap have taste. The natural taste of ap is sweetness. Rasa like rupa also denotes the genus rasatva, and rasa as quality must be distinguished from rasa as genus, though both of them are apprehended by the tongue.

The third is _gandha_ (odour), that quality which can be apprehended by the nose alone. It belongs to [email protected] alone. Water

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[Footnote 1: The reference is to Sautrantika Buddhism, "yo yo vruddhadhyasavan [email protected]" See [email protected]@ditas'oka's _Avayavinirakarana, Six Buddhist Nyaya tracts_.

[Footnote 2: The word "padartha" literally means denotations of words.]

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or air is apprehended as having odour on account of the presence of earth materials.

The fourth is _spars'a_ (touch), that quality which can be apprehended only by the skin. There are three kinds of touch, cold, hot, neither hot nor cold. Spars'a belongs to [email protected]; ap, tejas, and vayu. The fifth _s'abda_ (sound) is an attribute of akas'a. Had there been no akas'a there would have been no sound.

The sixth is [email protected] (number), that ent.i.ty of quality belonging to things by virtue of which we can count them as one, two, three, etc. The conception of numbers two, three, etc. is due to a relative oscillatory state of the mind ([email protected]_); thus when there are two jugs before my eyes, I have the notion--This is one jug and that is another jug. This is called [email protected]; then in the two jugs there arises the quality of twoness (_dvitva_) and then an indeterminate perception ([email protected]_) of dvitva in us and then the determinate perceptions that there are the two jugs.

The conceptions of other numbers as well as of many arise in a similar manner [Footnote ref 1].

The seventh is _parimiti_ (measure), that ent.i.ty of quality in things by virtue of which we perceive them as great or small and speak of them as such. The measure of the partless atoms is called [email protected]@dala [email protected]_; it is eternal, and it cannot generate the measure of any other thing. Its measure is its own absolutely; when two atoms generate a dyad ([email protected]_) it is not the measure of the atom that generates the [email protected] (atomic) and the _hrasva_ (small) measure of the dyad molecule ([email protected]_), for then the size ([email protected]_) of it would have been still smaller than the measure of the atom ([email protected]@dala_), whereas the measure of the [email protected] is of a different kind, namely the small (_hrasva_) [Footnote ref 2]. Of course two atoms generate a dyad, but then the number ([email protected]) of the atom should be regarded as bringing forth a new kind of measure, namely the small (_hrasva_) measure in the dyads. So again when three dyads ([email protected]) compose a [email protected] the number and not the measure "small"

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[Footnote 1: This is distinctively a [email protected] view introduced by Pras'astapada. Nyaya seems to be silent on this matter. See [email protected] Mis'ra's _Upaskara_, VII. ii. 8.]

[Footnote 2 It should be noted that the atomic measure appears in two forms as eternal as in "[email protected]" and non-eternal as in the [email protected] The [email protected]@dala [email protected] is thus a variety of [email protected]@na. The [email protected]@na and the [email protected] represent the two dimensions of the measure of [email protected] as mahat and dirgha are with reference to [email protected] See _Nyayakandali_, p. 133.]

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(_hrasva_) of the dyad is the cause of the measure "great" (_mahat_) of the [email protected] But when we come to the region of these gross [email protected] we find that the "great" measure of the [email protected] is the cause of the measure of other grosser bodies composed by them. For as many [email protected] const.i.tute a gross body, so much bigger does the thing become. Thus the c.u.mulation of the [email protected] of mahat [email protected] makes things of still more mahat [email protected]

The measure of [email protected] is not only regarded as mahat but also as dirgha (long) and this dirgha [email protected]