d that there was no invisible element associated,
it cannot be said that the smoke was immediately
preceded by fire and fire alone. Again accepting for the sake of
argument that causality can be determined, then also cause is
known to precede the effect and therefore the perception of smoke
can only lead us to infer the presence of fire at a preceding time
and not contemporaneously with it. Moreover there are many
cases where inference is possible, but there is no relation of cause
and effect or of identity of essence (e.g. the sunrise of this
morning by the sunrise of yesterday morning). In the case of
identity of essence (_tadatmya_ as in the case of the pine and the
tree) also there cannot be any inference, for one thing has to be
inferred by another, but if they are identical there cannot be any
inference. The nature of concomitance therefore cannot be described
in either of these ways. Some things (e.g. smoke) are
naturally connected with some other things (e.g. fire) and when
such is the case, though we may not know any further about the
nature of this connection, we may infer the latter from the former
and not vice versa, for fire is connected with smoke only under
certain conditions (e.g. green wood). It may be argued that there
may always be certain unknown conditions which may vitiate
the validity of inference. To this Vacaspati's answer is that if
even after observing a large number of cases and careful search
such conditions (_upadhi_) cannot be discovered, we have to take
it for granted that they do not exist and that there is a natural
connection between the middle and the major. The later
Buddhists introduced the method of _Pancakara@ni_ in order to
determine effectively the causal relation. These five conditions
determining the causal relation are (1) neither the cause nor the
effect is perceived, (2) the cause is perceived, (3) in immediate
succession the effect is perceived, (4) the cause disappears, (5) in

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[Footnote 1: _Karyyakara@nubhavadva svabhavadva niyamakat avinabhavaniyamo'
dars'ananna na dars'anat. Tatparya@tika_, p. 105.]

353

immediate succession the effect disappears. But this method
cannot guarantee the infallibility of the determination of cause
and effect relation; and if by the assumption of a cause-effect
relation no higher degree of certainty is available, it is better
to accept a natural relation without li