Vaisheshika-sutra with Commentary

by Nandalal Sinha | 1923 | 149,770 words | ISBN-13: 9789332869165

The Vaisheshika-sutra 10.2.3, English translation, including commentaries such as the Upaskara of Shankara Mishra, the Vivriti of Jayanarayana-Tarkapanchanana and the Bhashya of Chandrakanta. The Vaisheshika Sutras teaches the science freedom (moksha-shastra) and the various aspects of the soul (eg., it's nature, suffering and rebirth under the law of karma). This is sutra 3 (‘actions are non-combinative causes’) contained in Chapter 2—Of Other Forms of Cognition—of Book X (of the differences of the attributes of the soul and of the threefold causes).

Sūtra 10.2.3 (Actions are non-combinative causes)

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration, Word-for-word and English translation of Vaiśeṣika sūtra 10.2.3:

संयोगाद्वा ॥ १०.२.३ ॥

kāraṇe samavāyāt karmāṇi || 10.2.3 ||

kāraṇe—in the cause; samavāyāt—from combination; karmāṇi—actions.

3. Through combination in the (combinative) cause, Actions (are non-combinarive causes).

Commentary: The Upaskāra of Śaṅkara Miśra:

(English rendering of Śaṅkara Miśra’s commentary called Upaskāra from the 15th century)

He explains what causality resides in Action:

[Read sūtra 10.2.3 above]

“Non-combinative causes”—such is the complement (of the aphorism) Non-combinative causality is causality combined or co-inherent in one and the same object connected with the state of effect and cause. Such causality results either from combination in the same object with the effect, or from combination in the same object with the cause. Of these the former is called, in the terminology of the Vaiśeṣikas, the slighter or minor, and the latter, the greater or major, proximity. If it be asked by means of which proximity, then, actions possess non-combinative causality towards disjunction, and saṃskāra or impression; it is here replied, ‘kāraṇe samavāyāt,’ (that it is) through combination in the combinative cause of conjunction, etc. The meaning, therefore, is that non-combinative causality is exercised by action in (the production of) conjunction, etc., by means of the minor proximity characterised as combination in the same object with the effect.—3.

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