Verse 87

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

नेश्वरो जन्मिनां हेतुरुत्पत्तिविकलत्वतः ।
गगनाम्भोजवत्सर्वमन्यथा युगपद्भवेत् ॥ ८७ ॥

neśvaro janmināṃ heturutpattivikalatvataḥ |
gaganāmbhojavatsarvamanyathā yugapadbhavet || 78 ||

God cannot be the cause of born things,—because he is hlmsele devoid of birth,—like the ‘sky-lotus’, otherwise, all things would come into existence simultaneously.—(87)

 

Kamalaśīla’s commentary (tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā):

Question—“What is that Inference by which the Invariable Concomitance is annulled?”

The answer is provided by the following Text:—[see verse 87 above]

That which is itself devoid of birth cannot be the cause of anything;—as the ‘Sky-lotus’,—God is devoid of birth;—hence the proposition that He is the cause would be contrary’ to the Universal Premiss.—This-argument is meant only to indicate an absurdity in the doctrine of the Opponent; hence it is not open to the objection that the substratum of its Reason (Probans) is ‘unproven’.

Otherwise, all things would come into existence simultaneously;—what is meant is that, if the Cause were one whose efficiency is never obstructed, then all things would come into existence simultaneously,—exactly like things which are admitted to be produced at one and the same time.

This argument is the proof that annuls the Invariable Concomitance of the Theist. Or this may be taken merely as stating the sense of what has been said before.

The absurdity (involved in the Theist’s position) is to be shown in this manner:—When the Cause is present, in its complete form, then the Effect must appear as a matter of course; just as it is found in the case of the Sprout which appears as soon as the final stage has been reached by the causal conditions conducive to it;—now under the doctrine of the Theist, as God, the cause of all things, would always be there and free from defects, all things, the whole world, should come into existence at once.

The following argument might be urged:—“God is not the only Cause (of all things); in fact what He does He does through the help of such auxiliary causes as Merit and the rest,—God Himself being only the Efficient (Controlling) Cause. So that so long as Merit and the rest are not there, the ‘Cause’ of things cannot be said to be present there in its efficient form.”

This is not right; if there is help that has got to be rendered to God by the Auxiliary Causes,—then alone could He be regarded as dependent upon their aid; as a matter of fact however, God is eternal and as nothing can introduce into Him any efficiency that is not there already, there can be no help that He should receive from the Auxiliary Causes; why then, should He need such auxiliaries as are of no use to Him?—Further, even these Auxiliary Causes,—all of them should have their birth subject to God and as such, they should be always near Him. Thus, how can our Reason be regarded as ‘unproven’?—Nor is our Reason ‘inconclusive’; for if that were so (doubtful), then there would be no ‘Perfect (defectless) Cause’ at all (of things). If then, the Perfect Cause itself never came into existence, then there would be no birth (production) of anything, as the ‘absence of Perfect Cause’ would always be there.

Uddyotakara has argued as follows^[1]—“Though the Cause of Things named ‘God’ is eternal and perfect and always present, yet the producing of things is not simultaneous, because God always acts intelligently and purposely; if God had produced things by His mere presence, without intelligence (or purpose), then the objection urged would have applied to our doctrine. As a matter of fact however, God acts intelligently; hence the objection is not applicable; specially as God operates towards Products solely by His own wish. Thus our Reason is not Inconclusive

This is not right. The activity and inactivity of things are not dependent upon the wish of the Cause y only if it were so that the appearance of all Effects would not be possible, even in the constant presence of the untrammelled Cause in the shape of God, simply on account of His wish being absent. The fact of the matter is that the appearance and non-appearance of things are dependent upon the presence and absence of due efficiency in the Cause. For instance, even though a man may have the wish, things do not appear, if he has not the efficiency or power to produce them; and when the Cause in the form of Seeds has the efficiency or faculty to produce the Sprout, the Sprout does appear,—even though the Seed has no wish at all. If then the Cause called ‘God’ is always there fully endowed with the due -untrammelled efficiency,—as He is at the time of the producing of a particularng,—then why should Things stand in need of His wish, which can serve no purpose at all? And the result of this should be that all things should appear simultaneously, at the same time as the appearance of any one thing.—Thus alone could the untrammelled causal efficiency of God be shown, if things were produced simultaneously. Nor can God, who cannot be helped by otherngs, stand in need of anything, for which He would need His wish.

Further, in the absence of Intelligence, there can be no desire for anything else,—and the Intelligence of God you hold to be eternally uniform; so that, even if God acted intelligently, why should not there be a simultaneous production of things? Because like God Himself, His Intelligence also is always there.—If then, His Intelligence be regarded as evanescent, even so, it must co-exist with God, and its presence must be as constant as God Himself; so that the objection on that score remains in force.

Thus the addition of the qualification, in the form ‘because of God’s Intelligence’,—turns out to be futile; and our Reason is not ‘Inconclusive Nor is the Reason ‘Contradictory’, because the Probans is present in all cases of the Probandum.

And yet the production of things is not found to he simultaneous; hence the conclusion must be contrary to that desired by the Theist.

The argument may be formulated as follows:—‘When a certain thing is not found to be produced at a certain time, it must be taken to be one whose Cause at that time is not untrammelled in its efficiency,—as is found in the case of the Sprout not appearing while the Seed is still in the granary;—it is found that at the time of the appearance of one thing, the whole World is not produced,—hence what has been stated (by the Opponent) as a universal proposition is not found to be true.

This argument cannot be regarded as ‘futile’, because it has been shown that if God were the Cause of things, then it would be impossible to regard the Cause of things to be trammelled in any way.—(87)

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

These are not the exact words of the Nyāyavārtika; it is a paraphrase of what has been there said under Sutra 4.1.21, p. 466, 1.8, and p. 467, 11.10 et. seq., Bib. Ind. Ed.