Verse 3.1.14

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.1.14:

अनुवृत्तिधर्मो वा जातिस्स्यातसर्वजातिषु ।
व्यावृत्तिधर्मसामान्यं विशेषे जातिरिष्यते ॥ १४ ॥

anuvṛttidharmo vā jātissyātasarvajātiṣu |
vyāvṛttidharmasāmānyaṃ viśeṣe jātiriṣyate || 14 ||

14. In all universals, the fact of being a universal consists in being found in all (the individuals which belong to the class) while in all particulars (viśeṣa), .the universal consists in this that they distinguish (the things in which they reside from others).

Commentary

So far, it has been shown that all words have the same meaning (the universal or substance) on the basis of wordfunction (śabda-vyāpāra). The author now proceeds to show that, according to the Vaiśeṣikas also, i.e. on the basis of the common characteristic of objects, all words denote the universal.

[Read verse 14 above]

[So far it has been maintained that if is in the nature of a word to convey the universal, whether that universal really exists or not. A word conveys it through its function, its power to convey meanings. But even by following the Vaiśeṣika line of reasoning, one can show that the universal is the meaning of words. What is, after all, a universal? It is something which exists in all its substrata, as a result of which all of them produce a uniform cognition and are called by the same name. Another characteristic of a universal is that it pervades the whole of its substratum and not merely a part of it. A universal like gotva has these characteristics. But there are many universals and it is not unreasonable to believe that there is another universal existing in all of them and sharing the characteristics of a universal in general. The word viśeṣa also denotes a common characteristic of the same kind. There are as many viśeṣas as there are eternal things (nityadravya) and they all have this common characteristic, namely, that each one exists in one eternal thing and not in any other. This is also thus a common property, something like a universal. Words like abhāva also denote a universal of the same kind.

What Helārāja wants to point out is that all the viśeṣas produce a uniform kind of cognition and are the cause of the same name (viśeṣa) being applied to them.]

The author now explains how words like ākāśa, kāla and dik, which stand for things which are one and eternal, denote the universal.