Vaisheshika-sutra with Commentary
by Nandalal Sinha | 1923 | 149,770 words | ISBN-13: 9789332869165
The Vaisheshika-sutra 10.2.4, 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 4 (‘certain attributes 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 10.2.4 (Certain Attributes are non-combinative causes,...)
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration, Word-for-word and English translation of Vaiśeṣika sūtra 10.2.4:
तथा रूपे कारणैकार्थसमवायाच्च ॥ १०.२.४ ॥
tathā rūpe kāraṇaikārthasamavāyācca || 10.2.4 ||
tathā—so; rūpe—in colour; kāraṇa-eka-artha-samavāyāt—through combination in the same object with the cause; ca—and, also.
4. So also in Colour (there is non-combinative causality) through combination in the same object with the cause.
Commentary: The Upaskāra of Śaṅkara Miśra:
(English rendering of Śaṅkara Miśra’s commentary called Upaskāra from the 15th century)
[Full title: Certain Attributes are non-combinative causes, and occasionally efficient causes also]
In anticipation of the question as to what kind of causality pertains to colour and other attributes residing in the (constituent) parts, in relation to the attributes of the wholes, he says:
[Read sūtra 10.2.4 above]
The expression ‘colour’ indicates colour, taste, smell, touch, number, magnitude or quantity, separateness, gravity, fluidity, viscidity, etc. The term ‘so’ extends (the application of) non-combinative causality. ‘Kāraṇa-eka-artha-samavāyāt’: (This non-combinative causality of colour,' etc.) originates the colour, etc., of the wholes, by means of the major proximity (constituted) by (their) combination in the same object with the whole, which is the combinative cause of the colour, etc., of that whole; as, for instance, the colour, etc., of the potsherds originate the colour, etc., in the water-pot, and similarly it should be observed in all other cases. The word ‘ca’ implies that occasionally colour, etc., possess efficient causality also.—4.
Commentary: The Bhāṣya of Candrakānta:
(English translation of Candrakānta Tarkālaṅkāra’s Bhāṣya called the Vaiśeṣikabhāṣya from the 19th century)
Candrakānta reads X.ii.4 as two aphorisms, viz., Tathā rūpe, and Kārāṇai-kārtha-Samavāyācca.