Part 1 - A Comparative Review

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The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy looked at experience from a purely common sense point of view and did not work with any such monistic tendency that the ultimate conceptions of our common sense experience should be considered as coming out of an original universal (e.g. prakṛti of the Sāṃkhya). Space, time, the four elements, soul, etc. convey the impression that they are substantive entities or substances. What is perceived of the material things as qualities such as colour, taste, etc. is regarded as so many entities which have distinct and separate existence but which manifest themselves in connection with the substances. So also karma or action is supposed to be a separate entity, and even the class notions are perceived as separate entities inhering in substances. Knowledge (jñāna ) which illuminates all things is regarded only as a quality belonging to soul, just as there are other qualities of material objects.

Causation is viewed merely as the collocation of conditions. The genesis of knowledge is also viewed as similar in nature to the production of any other physical event. Thus just as by the collocation of certain physical circumstances a jug and its qualities are produced, so by the combination and respective contacts of the soul, mind, sense, and the objects of sense, knowledge (jñāna) is produced. Soul with Nyāya is an inert unconscious entity in which knowledge, etc. inhere. The relation between a substance and its quality, action, class notion, etc. has also to be admitted as a separate entity, as without it the different entities being without any principle of relation would naturally fail to give us a philosophic construction.

Sāṃkhya had conceived of a principle which consisted of an infinite number of reals of three different types, which by their combination were conceived to be able to produce all substances, qualities, actions, etc. No difference was acknowledged to exist between substances, qualities and actions, and it was conceived that these were but so many aspects of a combination of the three types of reals in different proportions. The reals contained within them the rudiments of all developments of matter, knowledge, willing, feelings, etc. As combinations of reals changed incessantly and new phenomena of matter and mind were manifested, collocations did not bring about any new thing but brought about a phenomenon which was already there in its causes in another form. What we call knowledge or thought ordinarily, is with them merely a form of subtle illuminating matter-stuff. Sāṃkhya holds however that there is a transcendent entity as pure consciousness and that by some kind of transcendent reflection or contact this pure consciousness transforms the bare translucent thought-matter into conscious thought or experience of a person.

But this hypothesis of a pure self, as essentially distinct and separate from knowledge as ordinarily understood, can hardly be demonstrated in our common sense experience; and this has been pointed out by the Nyāya school in a very strong and emphatic manner. Even Sāṃkhya did not try to prove that the existence of its transcendent puruṣa could be demonstrated in experience, and it had to attempt to support its hypothesis of the existence of a transcendent self on the ground of the need of a permanent entity as a fixed object, to which the passing states of knowledge could cling, and on grounds of moral struggle towards virtue and emancipation. Sāṃkhya had first supposed knowledge to be merely a combination of changing reals, and then had as a matter of necessity to admit a fixed principle as puruṣa (pure transcendent consciousness). The self is thus here in some sense an object of inference to fill up the gap left by the inadequate analysis of consciousness (buddhi) as being non-intelligent and incessantly changing.

Nyāya fared no better, for it also had to demonstrate self on the ground that since knowledge existed it was a quality, and therefore must inhere in some substance. This hypothesis is again based upon another uncritical assumption that substances and attributes were entirely separate, and that it was the nature of the latter to inhere in the former, and also that knowledge was a quality requiring (similarly with other attributes) a substance in which to inhere. None of them could take their stand upon the self-conscious nature of our ordinary thought and draw their conclusions on the strength of the direct evidence of this selfconscious thought. Of course it is true that Sāṃkhya had approached nearer to this view than Nyāya, but it had separated the content of knowledge and its essence so irrevocably that it threatened to break the integrity of thought in a manner quite unwarranted by common sense experience, which does not seem to reveal this dual element in thought. Anyhow the unification of the content of thought and its essence had to be made, and this could not be done except by what may be regarded as a makeshift—a transcendent illusion running on from beginningless time. These difficulties occurred because Sāṃkhya soared to a region which was not directly illuminated by the light of common sense experience.

The Nyāya position is of course much worse as a metaphysical solution, for it did not indeed try to solve anything, but only gave us a schedule of inferential results which could not be tested by experience, and which were based ultimately on a one-sided and uncritical assumption. It is an uncritical common sense experience that substances are different from qualities and actions, and that the latter inhere in the former. To base the whole of metaphysics on such a tender and fragile experience is, to say the least, building on a weak foundation. It was necessary that the importance of the self-revealing thought must be brought to the forefront, its evidence should be collected and trusted, and an account of experience should be given according to its verdict. No construction of metaphysics can ever satisfy us which ignores the direct immediate convictions of self-conscious thought. It is a relief to find that a movement of philosophy in this direction is ushered in by the Mīmāṃsā system. The Mīmāṃsā sūtras were written by Jaimini and the commentary (bhāṣya) on it was written by Śabara. But the systematic elaboration of it was made by Kumārila, who preceded the great Śaṅkarācārya, and a disciple of Kumārila, Prabhākara.

Footnotes and references:

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On the meaning of the word Mīmāṃsā see Chapter iv.