The Nyâya-Vais'e@sika 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 Nyâya-Vais'e@sikas depended solely on experience and on valid reasons, they dismissed the Sâ@mkhya cosmology, but accepted the atomic doctrine of the four elements (bhûtas), earth (k@siti), water (ap), fire (tejas), and air (marut). These atoms are eternal; the fifth substance (âkâs'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 âkâs'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 (kâla) as extending from the past through the present to the
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[Footnote 1: Almost all the books on Nyâya and Vais'e@sika 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 Nyâya in Bengal," by Mr. Cakravarttî in J.A.S.B. 1915.]
[Footnote 2: I have treated Nyâya and Vais'e@sika 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 Nyâyakandalî, 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 associated with all changes. The Sâ@mkhya did not admit the existence of any real time; to them the unit of kâla is regarded as the time taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of space. It has no existence separate from the atoms and their movements. The appearance of kâla as a separate entity is a creation of our buddhi (buddhinirmâ@na) as it represents the order or mode in which the buddhi records its perceptions. But kâla in Nyâya-Vais'e@sika is regarded as a substance existing by itself. In accordance with the changes of things it reveals itself as past, present, and future. Sâ@mkhya regarded it as past, present, and future, as being the modes of the constitution 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 Nyâya-Vais'e@sika conception of kala which is regarded as an all-pervading, partless substance which appears as many in association with the changes related to it [Footnote ref l].
The seventh substance is relative space (dik). It is that substance by virtue of which things are perceived as being on the right, left, east, west, upwards and downwards; kâla 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 (âtman) which is all-pervading. There are separate âtmans for each person; the qualities of knowledge, feelings of pleasure and pain, desire, etc. belong to âtman. 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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