actions, etc. No difference was acknowledged to exist
between substances, qualities and actions, and it was conceived

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[Footnote 1: On the meanirg of the word Mima@msa see Chapter IV.]

368

that these were but so many aspects of a combination of the three
types of reals in different proportions. The reals contained within
them the rudiments of all developments of matter, knowledge,
willing, feelings, etc. As combinations of reals changed incessantly
and new phenomena of matter and mind were manifested, collocations
did not bring about any new thing but brought about a
phenomenon which was already there in its causes in another
form. What we call knowledge or thought ordinarily, is with them
merely a form of subtle illuminating matter stuff. Sa@mkhya holds
however that there is a transcendent entity as pure consciousness
and that by some kind of transcendent reflection or contact
this pure consciousness transforms the bare translucent thought-matter
into conscious thought or experience of a person.

But this hypothesis of a pure self, as essentially distinct and
separate from knowledge as ordinarily understood, can hardly
be demonstrated in our common sense experience; and this has
been pointed out by the Nyaya school in a very strong and
emphatic manner. Even Sa@mkhya did not try to prove that the
existence of its transcendent puru@sa could be demonstrated in
experience, and it had to attempt to support its hypothesis of the
existence of a transcendent self on the ground of the need of
a permanent entity as a fixed object, to which the passing states
of knowledge could cling, and on grounds of moral struggle
towards virtue and emancipation. Sa@mkhya had first supposed
knowledge to be merely a combination of changing reals, and
then had as a matter of necessity to admit a fixed principle as
puru@sa (pure transcendent consciousness). The self is thus here
in some sense an object of inference to fill up the gap left by
the inadequate analysis of consciousness (_buddhi_) as being
non-intelligent and incessantly changing.

Nyaya fared no better, for it also had to demonstrate self
on the ground that since knowledge existed it was a quality,
and therefore must inhere in some substance. This hypothesis
is again based upon another uncritical assumption that substances
and attributes were entirely separate, and that it was the nature
of the latter to