Text 71

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of Text 71:

रूपरसगन्धानुष्णस्पर्शसंख्यापरिमाणैकपृथक्त्वसनेहशब्दानामसमवायिकारणत्वम् ॥ ७२ ॥

rūparasagandhānuṣṇasparśasaṃkhyāparimāṇaikapṛthaktvasanehaśabdānāmasamavāyikāraṇatvam || 72 ||

Text (71):—Colour, Taste, Smell, non-hot Touch, Number, Dimension, Single Separateness, Viscidity, and Sound are non-material causes.

Commentary: The Nyāyakandalī of Śrīdhara.

(English rendering of Śrīdhara’s commentary called Nyāyakandalī or Nyāyakaṇḍalī from the 10th century)

The “Immaterial cause” is that which is in touch with the material cause, and has a well-known efficiency (towards the effect). This ‘touch’ consists in inhering in the material cause, and also in inhering in the same substratum in which the material cause inheres. For instance, the material cause of Pleasure &c., is the Self; and therein inheres the contact of the Self and the Mind; and this contact is the Immaterial Cause of Pleasure &c.

Objection: “If such be the case, then Virtue and Vice also would be Immaterial causes.”

Reply: Not so; because they are never duly recognised as having any causal efficiency towards the production of the specific qualities of the whole Self; that is to say, Virtue does not produce Vice and Pain; nor does Vice produce Virtue and Pleasure.

In the same way it may be shown that the definition does not apply to Cognition &c. As for the contact of the Cogniser and the Mind, it is recognised as having a universal causal efficiency; and it is this peculiarity in this contact that makes it the “Immaterial cause.”

Then again, we find the Colour of the Threads inhering in the Threads, wherein also inheres the cloth which is the material cause of the Colour of the Cloth; and thence the Colour of the Threads is recognised as the Immaterial cause of the Colour of the Cloth. And of this latter Taste &c., could not be the immaterial cause; as it is the Colour of the Threads alone which is found, by positive and negative induction, to have the necessary causal efficiency,

Similarly we may explain the case of Taste &c. Hot Touch is also the Efficient or Instrumental cause of the qualities produced by cooking; hence the author mentions only the non-hot ‘Touch.’

Colour, Taste, Smell, Non-hot Touch, Dimension and Viscidity are such Immaterial causes as inhere in the same substratum as the material cause; as it is only when these subsist in the material cause that they produce, in the effect, their likes. Sound is an Immaterial cause that inheres in the material cause; as it is when subsisting in Ākāśa that it produces another Sound, and that too in the Ākāśa itself. Number and Separateness can be the Immaterial cause of both kinds: when subsisting in the (material) cause, they produce, respectively, in the cause, singleness and separateness; while in their own substratum, they produce duality and dual separateness, repectively.