the gu@nas is never revealed by the sense knowledge. What
appears to the senses are but illusory characteristics like those of magic
(maya):
"_Gunana@m parama@m rupam na d@r@s@tipatham@rcchati
Yattu d@rs@tipatham praptam tanmayeva sutucchakam._"
_Vyasabha@sya_, IV. 13.
The real nature of the gu@nas is thus revealed only by _prajna._]
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CHAPTER VIII
THE NYAYA-VAIS'E@SIKA PHILOSOPHY
Criticism of Buddhism and Sa@mkhya from the
Nyaya standpoint.
The Buddhists had upset all common sense convictions of
substance and attribute, cause and effect, and permanence of
things, on the ground that all collocations are momentary;
each group of collocations exhausts itself in giving rise to
another group and that to another and so on. But if a collocation
representing milk generates the collocation of curd
it is said to be due to a joint action of the elements forming
the cause-collocation and the _modus operandi_ is unintelligible;
the elements composing the cause-collocation cannot separately
generate the elements composing the effect-collocation, for on
such a supposition it becomes hard to maintain the doctrine
of momentariness as the individual and separate exercise of influence
on the part of the cause-elements and their coordination
and manifestation as effect cannot but take more than one moment.
The supposition that the whole of the effect-collocation is the
result of the joint action of the elements of cause-collocation is
against our universal uncontradicted experience that specific
elements constituting the cause (e.g. the whiteness of milk) are
the cause of other corresponding elements of the effect (e.g. the
whiteness of the curd); and we could not say that the hardness,
blackness, and other properties of the atoms of iron in a lump
state should not be regarded as the cause of similar qualities in
the iron ball, for this is against the testimony of experience.
Moreover there would be no difference between material (_upadana_,
e.g. clay of the jug), instrumental and concomitant causes (_nimitta_
and _sahakari_, such as the potter, and the wheel, the stick etc. in
forming the jug), for the causes jointly produce the effect, and
there was no room for distinguishing the material and the instrumental
causes, as such.
Again at the very moment in which a cause-collocation is
brought into being, it cannot exert its influence to produce its
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effect-collocation. Thus after coming into
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