Chapter 2 - Reality—The Soul and the World of Things

It is difficult to say that an unequivocal definition of reality or an exposition of the nature of the things of the world has been consistently held throughout the Caraka Samhita which is the main work on Indian medicine. One finds in it snatches of definitions and views expounded in extenso by the Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Sankhya and Vedanta systems of philosophy. The reason for this is not far to seek; for medicine, being a practical science, concerned itself with whatever was found applicable to suit its theory and practical concepts. The practical beginning of the Samhita is made with the mention of the Vaisheshika categories of Samanya (sāmānya) and Vishesha (viśeṣa) the general and the particular interpreted in the therapeutic light. This is prefaced by the mention of synonyms for life which include the phrase “the union of the body, the senses, the mind and the spirit” (Sūtra I.42).

The explanation of the nature of Samanya and Vishesha as being causative of synthesis and analysis respectively, is followed up immediately by a restatement of the synthesis that Mau is the aggregate of mind, spirit and body, and is like a tripod. He is the conscious agent and forms the subject matter of this science. For his benefit has this science been promulgated”. (Sūtra I, 46-47)

The totality of things existent has been described when Atreya declared that:

“Ether etc. (the five proto-elements) self, mind, time and space are the sum total of things.^[1] Things possessed of the senses are sentient or animate and things not possessed of the senses are insentient or innanimate”.

It is evident from the manner in which the subject of the Vaisheshika categories of reality is dealt with that the theory was already a popular one. A knowledge of the six categories is tacitly taken for granted and statement of the six categories of substance, quality, action, generality, particularity and inherence or coexistence, as preliminary to their further exposition is omitted. On the other hand, Atreya straightway expounds the nature of these categories in cryptic phrases referring to the lists of qualities etc., described in the much later parts of the treatise.

Referring to qualities, it is said,

[Sūtrasthāna 1.49]

“Heaviness etc., ending with the perceptions”, “knowledge etc., ending with effort”, “superior and other things are regarded as qualities”

“Similarly effort etc., are regarded as action”. (ibid).

The nature of action or effort is explained in a later section (Vimāna VIII) as the therapeutic endeavour and the therapeutic action of drugs. The qualities of sense-perceptions such as sound, smell etc., are the qualities which are the objects of sense-perception (Śārīra I). According to the Vaisheshika physics each quality is special to proto-element such as smell to earth, taste to water, form to fire, touch to air and sound to ether. These qualities may also be found combined in things as there is an intermixture of the elements in all things (Nyāya 3.1).

The qualities in substances such as heaviness, lightness, cold, heat, unctuousness, dryness, denseness, fixity, fluidity, softness, hardness, clearness, viscousuess, smoothness, roughness, grossness, subtleness, thickness and thinness are the twenty common ones and these are explained in their medical context fully. The psychic qualities of intelligence or Buddhi consists of memory, feeling, concentration and egohood. The qualities ending with effect are—like, dislike, happiness, grief, effort, feeling and concentration (Śārīra I). The priority etc, are the following namely, priority, non-priority, application regarding number, gynthesis, analysis particularity, measure, preparation and practice (Sūtra XXVI, 29-30)

Action is described in an entirely therapeutic sense. In the Vaisheshika view, action is movement of five kinds, upward and downward, expansive and contractive and other indeterminate types of movement Therapeutically construed a drug’s action in any of the five-fold manner described above may be used for purposes of emesis, purgation and such other therapeutic procedures ‘Action’ therefore is the therapeutic action of a drug or of the physician. In the chapter defining the therapeutic action, action is defined as the endeavour tor achieving a definite result, it is also called action, effort and the initiation of work or treatment. (Vimāna VIII-77)

It is evident that in Caraka, the Vaisheshika terms are all applied in therapeutic connotation, the terms of physics applied to pharmacological and physiological consequence. This should serve as a clue to our general understanding of the scope and the purpose of the treatise in its use of logical and metaphysical terms. They are taken from a context of pure thought and applied in a medical and practical situation. This is an attempt at not explaining or elaborating any current system of thought, but culling such facts and definitions as are already current in a manner suited to the purpose of building a framework of a positive science wherein drugs, man, disease and its cure could be harmonised. In so far as it is necessary to define and understand the terms and the factors that enable such a framework, the corresponding terms of various sciences of logic, physics and metaphysics are culled and utilised.

The definition of Samavaya (samavāya) coexistence, provides a striking illustration in this respect. In four masterly verses the nature of coexistence as well as substance and quality and action is described:—

[Sūtrasthāna 1.49-52]

“Coexistence is the inseparableness of earth etc, from their qualities. That coexistence is eternal. Wherever the substance exists the coexistent quality is never absent.”

“That which is the substratum of action and qualities, and the coexistent cause is substance.”

“Quality is the coexistent and inactive cause”.

“Action which is the cause of conjunction and disjunction resides in the substance. Action is the performance of what is to be done. It depends on nothing else”.

Thus the six categories of substance etc, are explained and this hexad is known as the “cause’ of all things or effects in the world. This theory of the nine substances comprising the things of the world is common to Vaisheshika and has been appropriated by the medical teachers thus far. The world is full of effects, in the forms of drugs, persons and things of these eternal original substances. The five proto-elements are atomic in structure and the atoms are possessed of the quality and action in the relation of generality, particularity and coexistence. Thus far it is a plurality of ultimate things. The world stands by combination. The products of such combination are more than the mere aggregate of parts of which they are produced.

The Sankhya which includes these among its categories, refers them to an original cause of which they are evolutes. The categories that are twenty-five are thus ultimately reduced to two—the self and original nature or Prakrti known variously as Avyakta and Pradhana. In Caraka there is a sudden transition from the pluralism of the Nyaya-Vaisheshika to the Sankhya categories, again making a fundamental deviation from it betraying Vedantic inclination towards one common origin of all things. We shall note this tendency and transition presently.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Vaisheshika and Nyaya Sutras—“Substances are nine only earth, water, light, air, ether, time, directions, self and mind”.