Vaiśeṣika Sūtra

Vaiśeṣika Sūtra (Sanskrit: वैशेषिक सूत्र), also called Kaṇāda Sūtra (कणाद सूत्र), is an ancient Sanskrit text at the foundation of the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy. Quotes about The Circle of Memory The Circle of Memory_ An Autobiography - Subhash Kak The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra (VS) is a central Indian text, but somehow it was ignored by scholars during the past century or so. I have seen books mention that Kaṇāda presented an atomic theory of matter independent and prior to the atomic doctrine of Democritus and leave it at that. As I began to study the VS I was astonished by the sophistication of the system. Concluding that Kaṇāda’s work is a masterpiece of world science, I decided to spend all the time I could get to do a new translation along with a commentary. The VS takes the world to be atomic, with atoms of four kinds. Each material substance is composed of these atoms, two (or perhaps three) of which have mass and the remaining do not. The ordinary molecules of matter have all the four basic atoms present in them for by heating a solid substance changes into liquid, and later into gas; with still further heating it burns, converting into heat and light. The intuition behind the theory is that one atom is indicative of solidity and this is the heaviest; the second atom makes the liquid state possible and therefore it should be lighter; the third atom represents decay and it has (probably) no mass (this is not expressly stated); and the fourth is the constituent of light and heat and it definitely has no mass. It is astonishing that these atoms have turned out to be similar to proton, electron, neutrino, and photon. The VS anticipates most of Newton’s laws of motion, including the one on how an object continues in its state of rest or motion unless impressed with forces and that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. The VS considers reality to have two aspects: physical and consciousness, with the two interacting when an observation is made. It anticipates the principle of psychophysical parallelism that lies at the basis of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory. The Vaiśeṣika system has categories not only for space-time-matter but also for attributes related to perception of matter. It starts with six categories (padārthas) that are nameable and knowable, asserting that nothing beyond these six is necessary. There are nine classes of substances (dravya), some of which are non-atomic, some atomic, and others all-pervasive. The non-atomic ground is provided by the three substances of ether (ākāśa), space (dik), and time (kāla), which are unitary and indestructible; earth (pṛthvī), water (āpas), fire (tejas), and air (vāyu) are atomic composed of indivisible, and indestructible atoms (aṇu); self (ātman), which is the eighth, is omnipresent and eternal; and, lastly, the ninth, is the mind (manas), which is also eternal but of atomic dimensions, that is, infinitely small. Put simply, the main insight of the Vaiśeṣika is that consciousness is not to be found as a property that emerges out of matter. The best analogy to understand it is to take reality as a coin of which one side is physical matter and the other side is consciousness, and ordinarily neither may be reduced to the other. Kaṇāda says that consciousness cannot be a substance for it is not something that is modified by time or space, and therefore it should be a separate ontological category. Kaṇāda speaks of nitya as a property that does not change or is invariant. From the perspective of physics, the idea of nitya is astonishingly modern. The property of nitya guarantees that the atom is spherical since it cannot have different characteristics along different directions. External links Category:Hindu texts