VAISHESHIKA

THE NAME Vaisheshika derives from the word vishesha, which means 'distinctive character' and consequently 'individual thing'; this darshana is therefore concerned with the knowledge of individual things as such, considered in distinctive mode, that is, in their contingent existence. While Nyāya treats of things in their relationship with the human understanding, Vaisheshika considers them more directly for what they are in themselves. It is easy to see the difference between these two points of view, though at the same time their connection also is apparent, since in the final analysis knowledge of a thing is one with the thing itself; however, the difference between the two points of view only disappears when both have been transcended, so that their distinction is always maintained within the frontiers of the domain to which they can properly be applied. This domain is plainly that of manifested nature, outside which the individual point of view, of which these two darshanas represent modalities, is devoid of meaning. But universal manifestation can be looked at in two different ways; either synthetically, starting from the principles out of which it proceeds and which determine it in its every mode—this is the point of view of Sāņkhya, as will be shown further on—or else analytically, in the distinguishing of its manifold constituent elements, and this is the line of approach of Vaisheshika. The latter point of view may even confine itself to the special consideration of a single mode of universal manifestation, such as that constituted by the sensible world; and in fact, it is bound to limit itself to this world almost entirely, since the conditions of the other modes necessarily lie beyond the grasp of the individual faculties of the human being; such modes can only be reached, as it were, from above, namely through that element in man which transcends the limitations and relativities inherent in the individual. This clearly goes beyond the distinctive and analytical point of view that we now have to describe; but, a particular point of view cannot be fully understood save by transcending it, given that it is not represented as being independent and as carrying its own justification wholly within itself but is recognized to be dependent on certain principles whence it is derived, being but an application, to a contingent order, of something belonging to a different and superior order.

We have seen that this reference to principles, which ensures the essential unity of the doctrine throughout its branches, is a feature common to every form of Indian traditional knowledge; it marks the profound difference that separates Vaisheshika from the scientific point of view as understood by Westerners, though it remains true to say that it is less remote from the latter than any of the other branches. In reality Vaisheshika approaches nearer to the point of view known among the Greeks as 'physical philosophy'; though analytical, it is less so than modern science, and is therefore less subject to the narrow specialization which causes the latter to lose its way in an endless maze of experimentation. The Vaisheshika darshana implies something that is fundamentally more rational and even, in a certain measure, more intellectual in the strict sense of the word than modern science: more rational, because, though it remains within the individual field, it is free from all empiricism; more intellectual, because it never loses sight of the fact that the entire individual order depends on universal principles, from which it derives all the reality it is capable of possessing. We have said that by the term 'physics' the ancients meant the science of nature in the widest sense of the word; the same term would then be suitable here also, but as against this it must be borne in mind how narrow its meaning has become in modern usage, following on the general narrowing of the corresponding point of view. So that, if a Western term is to be applied to a Hindu point of view, it seems preferable to speak of Vaisheshika as 'cosmology'; and indeed, the cosmology of the Middle Ages, which was clearly regarded as an application of metaphysics to the contingencies of the sensible world, comes still closer to this darshana than the 'physical philosophy' of the Greeks, which almost always finds its principles in the contingent order alone, or at best seeks them within the limits of the immediately superior but still particular point of view considered by the Sāņkhya.

Nevertheless, owing to the nature of its subject matter, Vaisheshika finished by producing a somewhat 'naturalistic' tendency in certain quarters among those who specially devoted themselves to its study; but this tendency, being generally foreign to the Eastern mind, never became as widely developed in India as it did in Greece through the influence of the 'physical philosophers'; at least, only certain schools belonging to the most degenerate forms of Buddhism were destined to push it to its furthest logical conclusion, and this was only possible for them because they were openly outside the traditional unity of Hinduism. Nevertheless, it is true to say that this tendency, which asserts itself plainly in the atomist conception, was already to be found in the ordinary teaching of Vaisheshika, since the origin of atomism, its heterodox character notwithstanding, is ascribed to Kanāda simultaneously with the development of Vaisheshika itself, though the two need not necessarily go together. The name of Kanāda seems moreover to contain some allusion to this theory, and if it belonged in the first instance to an individual, it can only have been as a mere surname; the fact that it alone has been handed down again shows the small importance attributed by the Hindus to individualities. In any case, in the implications at present carried by this name it is possible to detect something which, by reason of the deviation it indicates, is more akin to the 'schools' of Western antiquity than anything analogous to be found in the other darshanas.

Like Nyāya, Vaisheshika distinguishes a certain number of padārthas, but naturally it determines them from a different point of view; these padārthas do not therefore coincide in any way with those of Nyāya and they might even be included among the subdivisions of the second one, the prameya or 'object of proof'. The first of these padārthas, which are six in number, is called dravya; this word is usually translated as 'substance', quite an admissible rendering provided the term be taken, not in its metaphysical or universal sense, but in a relative sense only, in order to indicate the function of the logical subject; this is also the meaning that it bears according to Aristotle's conception of the categories. The second padārtha is 'quality', called guna, a word we shall meet with again in Sāņkhya, but differently applied; here the qualities in question are the attributes of manifested beings, or what the Scholastics called 'accidents' when considering them in relation to the substance or subject serving as their support in the order of manifestation in individual mode. If these same qualities were to be transposed beyond this particular mode and considered in the very principle of their manifestation, they would have to be regarded as constituents of 'essence', taken in the sense of a principle correlative and complementary to 'substance', either in the universal order, or even, relatively and by analogy, in the individual order; but essence, even individual essence, the attributes of which reside in it 'eminently' and not 'formally', lies outside the point of view of Vaisheshika, which is concerned with existence taken in its strictest sense, which is why attributes are really nothing more for it than 'accidents'.

We have intentionally worded these last comments in a language that will make them readily comprehensible to those versed in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Scholastics; this language is, moreover, in the present context, the least inadequate that Western usage has to offer. Substance, in both the senses that the word admits of, is the root of manifestation, but it is not itself manifested, becoming so only in and through its attributes, which are its modalities and which, conversely, enjoy no real existence in the contingent order of manifestation except in and through substance; it is in the latter that qualities reside and it is through the latter that action is produced. The third padārtha is in fact karma or action; and action, however it may differ in relation to quality, is included with the latter in the general notion of attributes, for it is nothing else but a 'manner of being' of substance; this is indicated by the fact that in the constitution of language, both quality and action are expressed by the common form of attributive verbs. Action is taken as consisting essentially in movement, or rather in change, for this much more far-reaching notion, in which movement constitutes but one species, applies most aptly here, as well as to the analogous conception in Greek physics. It may be said in consequence that action is a passing and momentary mode of being, whereas quality is a rela-tively permanent and in some measure a stable mode; but if action were to be considered in the integrality of its temporal, and even non-temporal, consequences, this distinction also would disappear, as might indeed be foreseen when it is remembered that all attri-butes whatsoever issue alike from one and the same principle, and this may be said both under the heading of substance and of essence.

It is permissible to be more brief in speaking of the following three padārthas, which in short represent categories of relation-ships, that is to say certain other attributes of individual substances and of the relative principles that provide the conditions immedi-ately determining their manifestation. The fourth padārtha is sāmānya, namely the association of qualities which, in all the vari-ous degrees that are possible, gives rise to the gradation of genera; the fifth is particularity or difference, more specially called vishesha, meaning whatever belongs exclusively to a given substance, that by which it is differentiated from all other substances; lastly, the sixth is samavāya or aggregation, that is to say the intimate relationship uniting a substance with the attributes inherent in it, and which is moreover itself an attribute of that substance. The association of these six padārthas, comprising in this way substances with all their attributes, makes up bhāva or existence; opposed to it correlatively is abhāva or non-existence, which is commonly counted as a sev-enth padārtha, though it is a purely negative conception: it is indeed the same thing as 'privation' taken in its Aristotelian sense.

As for the subdivisions of these categories, time need not be spent on any except those of the first padārtha: these are the modal-ities and general conditions of individual substances. Here are to be found, in the first place, the five bhūtas or elements that go to make up corporeal things, namely prithvi or 'earth', ap or 'water', tejas or 'fire', vāyu or 'air' and ākāsha or 'ether'; they are numbered consecu-tively, beginning with the one that corresponds to the final term of this mode of manifestation, that is to say according to the order that correctly corresponds to the analytical point of view of Vaisheshika: Sankhya, on the other hand, takes these elements in the contrary order, namely the order of their production or derivation. The five elements manifest themselves respectively through the five sensible qualities which correspond to them and are inherent in them, and which belong to the subdivisions of the second category. These qualities are substantial determinations, constitutive of all that belongs to the sensory world; it would be a great mistake to look on them as more or less analogous to the quite hypothetical 'simple bodies' of modern chemistry, or even to assimilate them to 'physical states', following a fairly common though inadequate interpretation of the cosmological theories of the Greeks. Besides the elements, the category of the dravya comprises kāla, 'time', and dish, 'space': these are the fundamental conditions of corporeal existence, and it may be added in passing that they represent respectively, in the special mode of manifestation constituted by the sensory world, the activity of the two principles which are called Shiva and Vishnu in the realm of universal manifestation. These seven subdivisions concern corporeal existence exclusively; but if an individual being (such as a human being) be considered as a whole, it includes, besides its bodily modality, constituent elements belonging to another order, and these elements are here represented by the two last subdivisions of the same category, ātma and manas. Manas, or to translate this word by another derived from the self-same root, 'mind', comprises the whole of the psychic faculties belonging to the individual being as such, reason being the faculty among them that properly characterizes man. As for ātma, a term that the word 'soul' renders most imperfectly, it is properly the transcendent principle to which individuality is attached and which stands superior to it, a principle to which pure intellect must here be referred. It is distinguished from manas, or rather from the composite whole formed by manas and the bodily organism, in the same way that personality, in its meta-physical sense, is distinguished from individuality.

It is in the theory of the corporeal elements especially that the atomist conception makes its appearance. According to this theory an atom, or anu, partakes, potentially at least, of the nature of one or other of the elements, and it is from the grouping together of atoms of various kinds, under the action of a force said to be 'non-perceptible' or adrishta, that all bodies are supposed to be formed. We have already said that this conception is formally opposed to the Veda, which asserts on the contrary the existence of the five elements with all that this implies: the two views therefore have really nothing in common. Besides, it is quite easy to expose the contradiction inherent in atomism, the basic error of which lies in supposing that simple elements can exist in the corporeal order, whereas all that is bodily is necessarily composite, being always divisible from the very fact that it is extended, that is to say subject to the spatial condition; in order to find something simple or indivisible it is necessary to pass outside space, and therefore outside that special modality of manifestation which constitutes corporeal existence. If, as must be done in this instance, the word atom be taken in its true sense of 'indivisible', a sense which modern physicists no longer give to it, it may be said that an atom, since it cannot have parts, must also be without extension; now the sum of elements devoid of extension can never form an extension; if atoms fulfill their own definition, it is then impossible for them to make up bodies. To this well-known and moreover decisive chain of reasoning, another may also be added, employed by Shankarāchārya in order to refute atomism:^[1] two things can come into contact with one another either by a part of themselves or by the whole; for atoms, devoid as they are of parts, the first hypothesis is inadmissible; thus only the second hypothesis remains, which amounts to saying that the aggregation of two atoms can only be realized by their coincidence purely and simply, whence it clearly follows that two atoms when joined occupy no more space than a single atom and so forth indefinitely; so, as before, atoms, whatever their number, will never form a body. Thus atomism represents nothing but sheer impossibility, as we pointed out when explaining the sense in which heterodoxy is to be understood; but, atomism excepted, the point of view of Vaisheshika, reduced to essentials, is a perfectly legitimate one, and the foregoing exposition has sufficiently defined its range and meaning.