Text 12

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of Text 12:

आश्रितत्वम् चान्यत्र नित्यद्रव्येभ्यः ॥ १२ ॥

āśritatvam cānyatra nityadravyebhyaḥ || 12 ||

Text (12): The character of being dependent (upon some thing else) belongs to all things except the eternal substances.

Commentary: The Nyāyakandalī of Śrīdhara.

(English rendering of Śrīdhara’s commentary called Nyāyakandalī or Nyāyakaṇḍalī from the 10th century)

By ‘āśritatva’—being dependent—is meant the fact of the thing being always perceived as depending upon something else; and this ‘dependence’ is not of the character of ‘inherence.’ (That is to say it does not mean that the thing is always found to be inhering in something else); because as a matter of fact this character of ‘āśritatva’ does not belong to Inherence.

“Except the eternal substances";—That is to say the character does not belong to the four kinds of atoms, or to Ākāśa, Time, Space, Self and Mind.

There are certain people who hold that properties are something absolutely distinct from the objects in which they inhere. For these people, after they have once postulated the property of ‘Astitva’ (existence) as the one basis of the single notion of ‘being’ including all things in the world, it would be absolutely useless to speak of ‘sattā’ (Being) as the common property of Substance, Quality and Action alone (as is done below).

As it is not these three alone that have existence, and existence, as a property, is held by these people to be as distinct from these three as from any thing else,—Samavāya f.i.—and the ‘astitva’ having afforded the necessary comprehensive notion,—there would be nothing left for which sattā could be postulated. If the ‘astitva’ should be distinct with each individual then, there would be no necessity of postulating any such all-comprehensive form as ‘astitva’; as the idea of ‘existence’ (that a certain thing ‘is’) could be got at from ‘sattā’ (being), and also from the particular ‘sattā’ (of each individual thing).

For those however, who hold ‘astitva’ to consist in a particular form of a positive entity, sattā would not be useless; as no particular form could ever afford any comprehensive notion of all existing things. Nor would it be unnecessary to postulate ‘astitva’; as sattā could not inhere in anything devoid of a positive form (and it is this positive form that is ‘astitva’). And thus in accordance with this view both ‘sattā’ and ‘astitva’ are found necessary.

Notes.

Samavāya is a particular form of relationship; and as such being an abstract entity, is one only: and hence it can have no plurality. Nor does it reside in any thing by the relation of inherence. As any such residence would involve the postulating of endless “Inherences.”