Preface

The Vaiśeṣika Sūtras of Kaṇāda, with the Commentary of Śaṅkara Miśra and extracts from the gloss of Jayanārāyaṇa and the Bhāṣya of Candrakānta, was first published in the years 1910 and 1911. In spite of the numerous imperfections of the work, it appears to have awakened a lively interest in the study and propagation of one of the oldest systems of Hindu Philosophy. For, its publication has been followed by a number of very valuable contributions to the literature of the subject from the pen of some eminent scholars. First and foremost amongst them is the Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus by Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M. A. Ph. I). (1915). Dr. Seal observes that “Hindu scientific ideas aud methodology (e. g. the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia—in the East as well as in the West—in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire’. and enters into “a comparative estimate of Greek and Hindu scence [?]”. He gives very lucid expositions of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika Themical Theory, of the conception of Molecular Motion (Parispanda), and of the ideas of Mechanics (Kinetics) and Acoustics, and deals very fully with the Doctrine of Scientific Method. In the following year (I916y, that accomplished scholar, Dr. Ganganatha Jha, M. A., D. Litt., came out with an English translation of the Padārtha-Dharma-Saṃgraha,—the Magnum Opus of the Vaiśeṣikas—, that is, Praśastpāda’s Bhāṣya on the Vaiśeṣika Sutras of Kaṇāda, with Śrīdhara’s Commentary (Nyayakandali) on the Bhāṣya. In the Introduction he explains the Vaiśeṣika conception of Bhūta (‘element’), and points out that “what the Vaiśeṣika means by saying that these are the ‘five bhūtas’, is that there are five states of matter: solid (Earth), liquid (Water), gaseous (Air), luminous (Fire), and etheric (Ākāśa).” The notes he has added in the body of the book are very illuminating, and clear up many obscure points in he text. In the year 1917, was published the Daśa-Padārtha-Śāstra: Chinese Text (translation), with Introduction, Translation and Notes, by H. Ui, Professor in the Sotoshu College, Tokyo, under the editorship of F. W. Thomas Esquire. It is a remarkable publication in many ways. In the first place, it presents us with a Chinese version of the tenets of Kaṇāda in the form of Kwei-ci s quotations, probably from a commentary on the treatise. The author tells us that the treatise was composed by a follower of the Vaiśeṣika, named Mati Candra, and translated into Chinese by Yuan Chwang in 648 A. D. It is in the form of a cateciism, and, as a catechism of the doctrines of the later school of the Vaiśeṣikas, it is almost unsurpassed. In the second place, the author has compiled from Chinese records an account of the traditions current among Chinese scholars respecting Kaṇāda, his work, and his school. His researches fully’ confirm our view of the great antiquity and popularity of the Vaiśeṣika-Sūtras. Last but not least is Indian Logic and, Atomism (1921) which is an exposition of the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika Systems, by A. B Keith, D. C. L., D. Litt., a well-known orientalist. He regards them “as able and earnest efforts to solve the problems of knowledge and being on the basis of reasoned argument”. He has attempted “to set out the fundamental doctrines [???] systems due regard to their history and their relations to Buddhist philosophy”. It is gratifying to-find that, as in the ancient past, even so at the present day, the Vaiśesika has engaged the attention of earnest students all over the world.

Now, what is the Vaiśeṣika Darśana? We do not know when or by whom the name ‘Vaiśeṣika’ was first applied to the teachings of Kaṇāda. In the Sūtras the word appears only once (in X. ii. 7) where it means ‘characteristic’, ‘distinguishing’. According to the rule of Pāṇini, IV. iii. 87, the word is derived from the word ‘Viśeṣa’, meaning ‘a treatise on Viśeṣa’. The word ‘viseṣa’ has various meanings; e. g. species, distinction, difference, excellence, superiority. Accordingly the word ‘Vaiśeṣika’ also has been variously interpreted. “The origin of the name”, in one view, “is in the fact that the system is distinguished from, and superior to, the Sāṃkhya”. In another view, “the work was named the Vaiśeṣika śāstra, since, it excelled other works in all respects, or because it was composed by a man of superior intelligence”. A third view is that it is called Vaiśeṣika, because it particularly or specifically treats of Genus, Species, and Combination which have not been dealt with in any other treatise and though they are included in the predicables Substance, etc. In a fourth view, it is distinguished from the Sāṃkhya in its theory of Buddhi (understanding), namely that Buddhi is an attribute of the Soul, and not its instrument of knowledge. In another view, it is distinguished from the System of Jaimini in so far as it declares that the highest good is to be achieved by the renunciation of the things of the world and by the contemplation of Truth, and not by positive performances. Lastly, it is explained that Kaṇāda’s system has come to be called “Vaiśeṣika’ from his theory of ‘viśeṣa’ inhering in the ultimate atoms (I. ii. 6). His atoms are ‘mathematical points’, without parts, and possessing the same attribute and activity in their respective classes of ‘Earth’, ‘Water’, ‘Eire’, and ‘Air’. It is by means of their ‘viśeṣas’ or individual characteristics that they are distinguished from one another, and account for the variety of things in nature. This last explanation appears to be preferable to all the others.

The vaiśeṣika is a Mokṣa-śāstra: it teaches a. doctrine of release, release from the coil of mortality. According to Kaṇāda, man must work out his own salvation. It is given to him, if he will, to hear the Truth from the Scriptures or from a preceptor, on high or here below, to think over it in his mind, and to meditate upon it in the recesses of his heart. He can control his sensory and motor organs, and, by eliminating superficial psychic states, make the mind steady in the Soul. Steadiness of the mind in the Soul is called Yoga. Yoga is neither a mystery nor is it mysticism. It is the realisation of the freedom of will, of the free Self. He then becomes master of time and space. For him there is no distinction of past, present, and future; no distinction of hero, there, and elsewhere. The mind being at rest, pleasure and pain do not arise, activity ceases, and the law of Karma is cancelled for all time to come. The accumulated Karma of the past, however, remains. Having realised the fundamental freedom of the Self, he sees what experiences are in store for him, and lives out those experiences in appropriate forms and surroundings brought about by the creative power of will. In this way he cancels the pastas well. Thereafter, when death takes place, and the soul finally quits its temporal abode it does not pass into other forms of finite life, but remains free for ever till the end of Time. That freedom is called Mokṣa, the supremo good, the be-all and end-all of existence.

Self-knowledge, Self-realisation, Ātma-sākṣātkāra, is then the only means of attaining Mokṣa. The fundamental teaching of Kaṇāda, therefore, is “tattva-jñānāt niḥśreyasam”, the supreme good results from the knowledge of the truth about the Soul. It is a translation of the Vedic text, “Tarati śokam Ātma-vit”, the knower of the Self overcomes Evil.

The Soul is therefore to be, known. Kaṇāda shows how it is to be known. Hence the Vaiśeṣika Śāstra is also called Adhātma Śāstra, a treatise respecting the Soul. It was not necessary for him to call attention to the nature of the Soul in itself, the pure Soul as it was in the beginning and as it will be in the end. It was enough for his purpose to demonstrate the nature of the Soul in the interval of Time, the suffering Soul, the Soul revolving on the wheel of births and deaths and re-births under the Law of Karma. The universal experience of Suffering (“Duḥkha”) compels an enquiry as to the means of its removal, namely, realisation of the truth about the Soul; and Kaṇāda’s view is that the Soul can be known by means of the Not-Soul.

The Soul and the Not-Soul make up Reality. The Real is that which is knowable and namable-Reality therefore consists of Padār-thas, namables or predicables. They are not merely categoric of Thought, in the sense that they have no existence outside and independent of thought. They are classes of entities which have an existence antecedent to, and independent of, our thought. They become objects of our thought, they are-knowable and nameable, because they exist. “In pure perception we are actually placed outside ourselves, we touch the reality of the object in an immediate intuition “(Bergson). Tattva-ṣākṣātkāra, immediate intuition of reality, is the aim of Kaṇāda’s philosophy.

By a subtle process of analysis and synthesis, Kaṇāda divides all nameable things into six classes: viz. substance, attribute, action, genus, species, and combination. He then shows, that attribute and action exist by combinaton with substance. Without substance, there were-no attribute and action. Similarly, genus and species are correlative, and are not absolute, except in the case of the highest genus which is existence, and the lowest species which is the viśosas [viśeṣas?] or individual characteristics appertaining to, inhering in the eternal substances. Genus and species therefore exist by combination with substances. Without substance, there where were no genus and species. Similarly, combination is “the intimate connection in the inseparably connected things” ; e.g. of parts and wholes, of substances and their attributes, of action and the sent of action, of genus and species and substances in which they reside, and of eternal substances and their ultimate differences. Without substance, then, there were no combination. Substance, therefore, is the fundamental reality.

By analysis, substance is resolved into nine kinds: viz. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, Time, Space, Soul, and Mind. Of these Earth, Water, Fire, and Air are, as effects, i. e., wholes made up of parts, non-eternal. Their ultimate atoms which are without parts, are eternal. On the other hand, Ether, Time, Space, Soul, and Mind are without parts, and therefore eternal. Ether is held to be “nothing other than the cosmic vacuum (?) which contains all objects, and gives room for their activities”. Time and Space are complementary to Ether. The three substances are in reality one only (Praśastapāda and Candrakānta). Mind, again, is entirely material, and yet capable of coming into intimate relation with the Soul; it is as it were a sort of camera obscura to the Soul. In another view, the ultimate atoms are subject to change; they produce effects, and themselves undergo changes, but do not initiate changes, except in so far as they reflect themselves in the Mind. Mind also suffers change; it modifies in the form of every object it comes in contact with; otherwise it is absolutely inactive. The Soul, on the other hand, does not suffer change of states. It is the initiator of change in everything else. Cognition, pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, volition, merit, demerit, and impression are its attributes, and not its essence. They are determinations of Will, and prove a state of “indetermination of Will” in which the Soul is truly free and eternal. It follows that Atoms, Minds, and Souls are the ultimate units in Creation. The highest Soul, the Supreme Person, is God.

Atoms and Minds do not exist for themselves. They exist for the Souls, for their bhoga and apavarga, transmigration and emancipation. In the beginning of Creation, activity is induced in them—they are set in motion,—by Adṛṣṭa, the resultant energy abiding in the Souls as a consequence of their previous activities. It causes the combination of atoms to form the body and the world. “The sphere of transmigration is the common result of the individual adṛṣṭa, and every one’s body and other personal circumstances are the special results of the individual adṛṣṭa”. It has no activity during the time of the world’s dissolution. At the end of the period of dissolution, it is set free by the will of God. It then starts the process of Creation, and maintains it; it is the sustaining energy from the beginning to the end of Creation. It can be neutralised,—its force can be exhausted,—only by the action of the Soul (Vaiśeṣika Sūtras, V. ii. 16).

In this view the interesting references that are met with here and there in the Vaiśeṣika Sutras, to cosmology, geology, mineralogy, botany and plant-physiology, zoology, physiology, mechanics, acoustics, and other positive sciences, become explained. The doctrine of adṛṣṭa carries the enquiry further into the field 01 ethics and sociology, on the one hand, a id logic and epistemology as well as psychology and philology, on the other For, the Soul is at the core of reality, that is, the real which is k knowable and namable. Every individual Soul is the centre of a separate world of its own, which is evolved to suit its adṛṣṭa. To know the Soul,—to have immediate intuition of it. therefore. it is necessary to know the Not-Soul. “For we do not obtain an intuition from reality, that is, an intellectual sympathy with the most intimate part of it,—unless we have won its confidence by a long fellowship with its superficial manifestations. (Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics).

Kaṇāda accordingly elaborates a process of thinking consideration of things. As Dr. Deussen rightly observes, “Indian Philosophy did not start, as, for the most part, the Greecian did, from an investigation free of assumptions into the existent, hut rather like modern philosophy from the critical analysis and testing of a complex of knowledge handed down (through the Veda).” Hence the Vaiśeṣika is also called Manana śāstra, treatise based on reasoning, rational or critical system. The starting point of the system is the observation and analysis of objects, with a view to their strict definition and a correct, appreciation of their place and function in the world of bhoga and apavarga, probation and perfection, bondage and freedom. And tattva-jñāna, knowledge of truth, is its end and aim. To accomplish this result, it evolves a doctrine of Scientific Method, which, however, is “only a subsidiary discipline, being comprehended under the wider conception of Methodology,” which proceeds by way of “(1) the proposition (or enumeration) of the subject-matter (Uddeśa), (2) the ascertainment of the essential characters or marks, by Perception, Inference, the Inductive Methods, etc.—resulting in definitions (by lakṣaṇa) or descriptions (by upalakṣaṇa); and (3) examination and verification (parikṣa and nirṇaya)” (Seal). In this method, logic is not pure reasoning or inference; the reasoning is also proof. And the Methodology evolved by Kaṇāda and Gotama has been carried almost to perfection in the later Nyāya, “which, inspite of its arid dialectics, possesses a threefold significane in the history of thought: (1) logical, in its conceptions of Avacchedaka and Pratiyogī, being an attempt to introduce quantification on a connotative basis, in other words, to introduce quantitative notions of Universal and Particular, in both an affirmative and a negative aspect, into the Hindu theory of Inference and Proposition regarded counotatively as the establishment of relations among attributes or marks; (2) scientific, in its investigation of the varieties of Vyāpti and Upādhi (and of Anyathāsiddha), being an elaboration of Scientific Method, in the attempt to eliminate the irrelevant; and (3) ontological and epistemological, in its classification and precise determination of the various relations of Knowledge and Being, with even greater rigidity and minuteness than in Hegel’s Logic of Being and Essence” (Seal).

The criterion of truth, in the Vaiśeṣika Sūtras, is the correspondence of thought with things and vice versa Truth a id reality are, in this system, convertible terms. “* * * the existence of the concept of an object, subjective as well as objective, is the logical reason for and the real consequence of the existence of the object” (?i). Existence pervades the world of reality: to be real, is to be existent: and to be existent is to be knowable and namable; that is, there must be in it “an immediately intuitable element, which is determined by the function of one or more of our senses, or by inner perception” (Sigwart), or, as we should say, by the ‘mind’, and all, by meditation and transcendental or pure perception (tattva-sākṣātkāra). Hence the Vaiśeṣika is called a realism, and,—a dualism.

A characteristic d octrine of the Vaiśeṣika is its Kriyā-vāda. This is the doctrine which holds that self is active, or that self is affected by pleasure or desire etc, in other words, that it is a kartri or an age it, i i the course of the evolution, or more correctly, revolution of its transmigatory existence.

Another characteristic doctrine of the Vaiśeṣika is its Ārambha-vāda: the doctrine, namely, that the world as an effect, is not a mere appearance (vivarta) of the cause, nor an evolution (pariṇāma) of the cause, but is produced by aggregation of the cause which is the ultimate atoms. And this leads to the doctrine of Asat-kārya-vāda, that is, that an effect has only a temporary existence, and that, before its production, and, after its destruction, it is non-existent.

Before we close this short notice of the scope and character of the Vaiśeṣika Philosophy, it is our pleasant duty to acknowledge our obligations to the distinguished authors cited above. Our special thanks are due to Dr. Seal and Professor Ui whom we have freely quoted.

Translator.