Last Reason For Satkaryavada

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269443/1

Page #1

The last reason for satkāryavāda
JOHANNES BRONKHORST, Lausanne
This modest contribution to the volume in honour of Professor Minoru HARA contains a supplementary observation to the lecture which, at his invitation, I had the pleasure of giving at the International Institute for Buddhist Studies in Tokyo in May 1996, and which became the basis for a series of lectures (Paris 1997) that have now been published under the title Langage et réalité: sur un épisode de la pensée indienne (BRONKHORST, 1999). This note is not based on new independent research, but has been inspired by and draws upon Professor Phyllis GRANOFF's contribution to the conference on Samkhya and Yoga (Lausanne 1998) which too has now been published (GRANOFF, 1999).
The Samkhyakārikā justifies the doctrine of satkāryavāda in kārikā 9, which reads:
asadakaranad upädänagrahanät sarvasambhavābhāvāt / Śaktasya sakyakaranát karanabhäväc ca sat käryam /19/1
This kärikä contains five arguments, the last of which concerns us at present. It reads, in Sanskrit: karanabhāvāt sat kāryam. This is ambiguous, and allows of at least three different interpretations:
(1) "Because the cause] is a cause, the product exists." (2) "Because the product) is [identical with] the cause, the product exists." (3) "Because of the existence of the cause, the product exists."
Only the Jayamangalā appears to opt for interpretation (3), in the following obscure passage:
kāranabhāvāc ceti: karanasya sattvād ity arthah. yady asat käryam utpadyate kim iti? karanád eva na käryasya bhavo bhavati, bhavati ca. tasmac chaktirūpenavasthitam iti gamyate. "Karanabhāvāc ca means: because of the existence of the cause. If it is asked: the product, (though] non-existent, comes into being, what is the conse
Festschrift Minoru Hara (2000), S. 53-62

Page #2

Johannes Bronkhorst
quence]?' (then the answer is:) 'The product does not exist as a result of the cause only, and yet it exists. It is therefore understood that the product] is present in the cause) in the form of a potency.""!
The logic of this argument is not fully clear to me. It may be something like this: The very fact that there can be a cause implies that there must be a product. Understood in this way interpretation (3) is not very different from interpretation (1).?
Most of the surviving commentaries on the Samkhyakārikā prefer interpretation (2). They all seem to agree that the product is identical with the cause. The Gaudapadabhäsya, for example, states:
karanam yallaksanam tallaksanam eva karyam api "Whatever is the nature of the cause, the same is the nature of the effect" (tr, Mainkar).
The Matharavrtti and the Samkhyasaptativtti use practically the same words. The Jayamangala, having first presented interpretation (3), then gives, as an alternative, interpretation (2): yatsvabhāvam kāraṇam tatsvabhāvam kāryam. Vācaspati Miśra's Tattvakaumudi formulates the same position in the following words: 'karanabhāvāc ca': käryasya kāraṇātmakatvāt. na hi karaņād bhinnam kāryam, karanam ca sa iti karham tadabhinnam karyam asat bhavet. The commentary translated by Paramärtha into Chinese appears to have adopted the same position. The Samkhyavrtti edited under the name V, by Esther A. SOLOMON seems to accept a variant of this interpretation. If we accept the corrections proposed by its editor, it reads: karanabhāvād iti: kāraṇeșu präg utpatteḥ sat karyam iti. This suggest the interpretation: "Because the product) is in the causes [before it comes into being), the product exists."
"I thank Professor Wezler for help in interpreting this passage. ? Mainkar, 1964: 25-26. Mainkar, 1964: 25-26
Sarma, 1922: 17: iha loke yallaksanam karanam tallaksanam karyam syar; Solomon, 1973: 18: iha loke yallaksanam karanam tallaksanam karyam api bhavari
Satkariśarma Vangiya, 1970:74. JHA, SHARMA and PATKAR, 1965: 47: SRINIVASAN, 1967: 98-101. Cp. Takakusu, 1904: 991: "L'effet est de la même espèce que la cause."

Page #3

The last reason for satkāryavada
The similarity between these commentaries is great, and it is not surprising that SOLOMON in her comparative study of the commentaries remarks (SOLOMON, 1974: 27): "kāranabhāvāt is similarly explained by all." This is not however fully correct. The Yuktidipikā, the "most significant commentary on the Samkhyakarikā", comments in a manner which allows us to conclude that it accepts interpretation (1). It states:
karanabhāvāc ca sat käryam': ihasati karye karanabhāvo nästi tadyatha
vandhyāyāḥ. asti ceha karanabhāvas tantupatayoḥ. tasmāt sat kāryam. The explanation can be translated:
"On the one hand (iha), something or somebody - as for example a barren woman - is not a cause in case there is no product. On the other hand (iha), from among the thread and the cloth (one of the two, viz. the thread] is a cause (because there is a product, viz. the cloth). For this reason the product
exists (while the cause is there)." In other words, without a product being there, a cause is not a cause; or, the other way round, because a cause is a cause, there must be a product. This is interpretation (1).
It is surprising that interpretation (2) is so strongly represented in the surviving literature of Sāmkhya, and interpretation (1) so weakly. Interpretation (1) is of a type that is wide-spread in Indian philosophical literature, as we shall see below; this is not true of interpretation (2).
Let us now turn to the material presented in GRANOFF's article mentioned above. GRANOFF draws attention to a Buddhist text - Santarakṣita's Tattvasamgraha and its commentary Pañjika by Kamalaśīla — and to a number of Jaina texts which all cite and discuss Samkhyakarika 9, i.e. the Samkhya arguments in defence of satkāryavāda. She argues convincingly that the Jaina texts follow here the lead of the Tattvasamgraha. All these texts offer an interpretation of karanabhāvāt which is close to what is offered in the Yuktidipika. The Tattvasamgraha, for example, gives the following explanation:
* Wezler and Motegi, 1998: 124 1. 6-8.

Page #4

S6
Johannes Bronkhorst
karyasyaivam ayogāc ca kim kurvat kāraṇam bhavet / tatah karanabhávo 'pi bijāder nävakalpate //
"And because the product would in this way be impossible, what is it that the cause would produce? As a result the seed etc. cannot even be cause."
The Pañjika comments:
asatkāryavāde sarvathāpi karyasyāyogāt kim kurvat bijādi kāraṇam bhaver. tataś caivam sakyate vaktum: na karanam bijādih, avidyamanakaryatvad, gaganābjavad iti. na caivam bhavati, tasmad viparyaya iti siddham: prāg
utpatteḥ sat karyam iti. The logical proof contained in this passage can be translated as follows:
"The seed etc. are no cause, because no product is present, like a lotus in the sky (which, being totally non-existent, is not accompanied by a product, and is therefore no cause). However, it is not like this (i.e., seed is a cause); therefore the reverse (must be true), and thus it is established that the product
is present before it comes into being." Abhayadeva's Tattvabodhavidhayini cites the above verse from the Tattvasamgraha and explains the last argument in exactly the same terms as the Pañjikā. 10 But also Prabhācandra's Prameyakamalamartanda is clearly influenced by these two Buddhist texts when it states: bijādeh karanabhāvāc ca sat karyam kāryāsattve tadayogát. tatha hi: na karanabhāvo bijādeh avidyamanakāryatvāt kharavişānavar. tat siddham utpatteh prāk kärane käryam." In his Kumudacandra Prabhācandra explains the logic behind the argument: 'karanabhävāc ca sat karyam'. kāraṇabhāvo hi karanatvam, tac ca nityasambandhitvāt kāryasambandham apeksate, na ca asatā gaganāmbhojaprakhyena karanasya kaścit sambandhah, ataḥ karane käryam tādātmyena vartate. 12
GRANOFF sums up the arguments as follows (p. 583): "The Jain texts (and the Buddhist Tattvasamgraha ...) agree that the argument is something like this: The product must exist, since we speak of a cause and causality is a relationship. A non-existent entity cannot be one term of a relationship. We do not see hare's horns
Tattvasamgraha 13; Dwarikadas Shastri, 1981: I: 26. 10 Samghavi & Dośi, 1924-1931: 1: 283 1. 22-27 11 Kumar, 1990: 288 1. 9-11. 12 Kumar, 1991: 353 1. 5-7.

Page #5

The last reason for satkāryavāda
57
entering into any kind of relationship with anything. Therefore the product must exist in order for us to speak of something being a 'cause' at all." That is, they all follow interpretation (1) of the sentence käraṇabhāvāt sat kāryam "Because [the cause] is a cause, the product exists."
Does this mean that these Jaina texts and the Tattvasamgraha from which they borrowed have all undergone the influence, direct or indirect, of the Yuktidipika? GRANOFF emphatically denies this: "the Jain texts show little or no awareness of the often unique arguments of the Yuktidipikā, which might lead to the further speculation that the Yuktidipika was not a text whose theories were hotly debated outside Samkhya circles" (p. 582). With regard to the first four arguments presented in Samkhyakärikā 9 she observes: "The Yuktidīpikā... deviates from the other interpretations [offered in the other commentaries on this text] considerably, but the Jain texts l'have examined show absolutely no awareness of its arguments for much of the verse" (p. 583).
All this means that the Tattvasamgraha and the Jaina texts that borrow from it share the fifth argument in favour of satkaryavāda with the Yuktidipika and with no other Samkhya commentaries, but are totally ignorant of the first four arguments presented in that same Yuktidipika. How is this to be explained? GRANOFF offers the following solution (p. 583): "It seems... likely that [these Jaina texts and the Tattvasamgraha] derive their interpretation from some text that we no longer have at our disposal today." She adds (p. 584): "There remains, then, considerable detective work to be done on this question."
Such detective work cannot be carried out here and now. It is however interesting to conclude that the Yuktidipikā appears not to have been the only text that followed interpretation (1). This is reassuring, because there are good reasons to believe that interpretation (1) was the original interpretation of the sentence käraṇabhāvāt sat karyam.
How can one know the original interpretation of an ambiguous sentence that allows of at least three interpretations? Several factors support interpretation (1), all of them based on other texts than the Samkhyakärikā and its commentaries." One is that Aryadeva's Sataka, which is older than the Samkhyakärikä, appears to contain the same argument. apparently in the same ambiguous form. Its commentator Vasu,
13 For details. see Bronkhorst, 1999.

Page #6

58
Johannes Bronkhorst
by stating "If the pot does not pre-exist in earth, then earth could not become the cause of the pot", shows that he opted for interpretation (1).
More important is that the kind of argument embodied in interpretation (1) was widely used in Indian philosophy at the time when Samkhya as a system was being created. For details I have to refer to my book Langage et réalité. Here I will merely cite a verse from Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakärikā, which uses this argument:
naivāsato naiva sataḥ pratyayo 'rthasya yujyate/ asataḥ pratyayaḥ kasya sataś ca pratyayena kim //4
"Neither of a non-existent nor of an existent object is a cause possible. Of which non-existent [object] is there a cause? And what is the use of an existent [object]?"
We recognize the assumption which also underlies interpretation (1): for something to be a cause, there has to be a product, there and then. Once one accepts this assumption, one may be induced to drawing various counterintuitive conclusions: Nagarjuna that no cause can exist, the Samkhyas their no less extraordinary position that the product is there before it has been produced.
Is it possible to say more about the assumption underlying these and other arguments? GRANOFF formulates it as follows, as we have seen: "The product must exist, since we speak of a cause and causality is a relationship. A non-existent entity cannot be one term of a relationship. We do not see hare's horns entering into any kind of relationship with anything. Therefore the product must exist in order for us to speak of something being a 'cause' at all." This formulation takes care of the fifth argument in the Yuktidipika which we also find in the Tattvasamgraha and the Jaina texts considered, and also of Nagarjuna's above argument, and no doubt of many other arguments found in Indian philosophical texts of that period. However, there are textual passages which allow us to conclude that a formulation has to be accepted in which the parellelism between what we say and the situation described finds expression. An example is the following passage from Sankara's Brahmasutra Bhāsya, which argues precisely in defense of the satkaryavāda:
präg utpatteś ca karyasyasattve utpattir akartṛkä nirätmikā ca syat / utpattis ca nāma kriyā, sā sakartṛkaiva bhavitum arhati gatyādivat / kriya ca näma syād akartṛkā ceti vipratiṣidhyeta / ghatasya cotpattir ucyamănă na ghaṭakartṛkā,
14 MadhK(deJ) 1.6..

Page #7

The last reason for satkäryavāda
kim tarhy anyakartrkā iti kalpyā syāt / ... / tathā ca sati ghata utpadyate ity ukte kulalădini karanāni utpadyante ity uktam syāt / na ca loke ghatotpattir ity ukte kulālādinām apy utpadyamănată pratiyate / utpannatāpratiten / "If the effect did not exist prior to its coming into being, the coming into being would be without agent and empty. For coming into being is an activity, and must therefore have an agent, like (such activities) as going etc. It would be contradictory to say that something is an activity, but has no agent. It could be thought that the coming into being of a jar, (though) mentioned, would not have the jar as agent, but rather something else. ... If that were true, one would say "the potter and other causes come into being" instead of "the jar comes into being". In the world however, when one says "the jar comes into being" no one understands that also the potter etc. come into being; for'[these]
are understood to have already come into being."15 In other words, the situation described has to correspond to the way we describe it. This is also clear from the following verse that occurs in Nagarjuna's Mülamadhyamakakärika:
gamyamanasya gamane prasaktam gamanadvayam / yena tad gamyamanam ca yac catra gamanam punah // "If there is a going of (a road) that is being gone, there would be two goings: that by which the (road) is being gone, and again the going on it."
The only possible reason for thinking that there should be two goings is that the sentence describing the situation – something like "[the road) which is being gone, is being gone" (gamyamanam gamyate) - has the verb 'going' twice over.
In the light of these and similar reflections I have proposed to formulate the more or less hidden assumption behind all these arguments as follows: "the words of a sentence must correspond, one by one, to the things that constitute the situation described by that sentence":17 I call this the correspondence principle. It takes for granted that there is, at some particular time, a situation in which all the things that constitute it occur together, and this forced many Indian thinkers - among them
" Sankara ad Brahmasútra 2.1.18; cited and discussed in Bronkhorst, 1996: 2. 16 MadhK(de)) 2.5; cited and discussed in Bronkhorst, 1997: 34. "? Bronkhorst, 1996: 1; 1997: 32; 1999: $ 1.1.

Page #8

60
Johannes Bronkhorst
Nāgārjuna and the Sāmkhyas - to draw counterintuitive conclusions.
We cannot conclude this discussion without addressing the question as to why most of the commentaries of the Samkhyakārikā have given an interpretation to the fifth argument different from the one originally intended. One answer may well be that the first and the fifth argument would otherwise be almost identical. The first argument, it may be recalled, reads:
asadakaranāt (sat karyam]
"The product exists because one does not produce something that does not exist."
One might elucidate the logic underlying this argument with the following variant of GRANOFF's above explanation: "The product must exist, since we speak of producing and producing something is a relationship (between the maker and the product, or between the making and the product). A non-existent entity cannot be one term of a relationship. Therefore the product must exist in order for us to speak of producing something at all." Or, using the correspondence principle, one might say that there must be something corresponding to the word 'pot' in the situation described by the statement "He produces a pot". Either way the argument presented is close to the the fifth argument in interpretation (1).
However, more may have been involved in the preference for interpretation (2). The commentaries that offer this interpretation in this way take position in an altogether different debate, which may have been initiated by the Vaiśeşikas. One of the fundamental positions of this school of thought - one of its "axioms" - is that composite objects are different from their constituent parts. It may have arrived at this position as a result of opposing the Buddhist point of view according to which no composite objects but only their constituent parts exist. However this may be, once these points of view had been articulated in Indian philosophy, the Samkhyas were more or less obliged to determine their own position in this controversy. They chose the position which maintains that composite objects and their constituent parts are not different from each other. Concretely speaking: a cloth is not different from the threads that constitute it.
18 Bronkhorst, 1992.

Page #9

The last reason for satkaryavāda
It will be clear that this position could easily be made to agree with the doctrine of satkäryavada. The cloth is namely also the product of the threads, which are its cause. The doctrine of satkäryavāda states that the cloth is there, in the threads, at the time when it has not yet been made. The classical Samkhya position regarding parts and wholes states that the cloth is not different from the threads that constitute it. Combined they state that the cloth is there, in the threads, because it is not really different from them. This is interpretation (2) of the Sanskrit phrase karanabhavat sat kāryam.
It is doubtful whether this argument adds much in support of the satkaryavāda, but this may not have disturbed the Samkhya commentators much. The main argument of this doctrine having been given already by the phrase asadakaranāt (see above), the new interpretation (2) of karanabhāvāt sat kāryam made it possible to present supporting evidence from the Samkhyakārika for the position that parts and wholes are identical.
Literature
Bronkhorst, Johannes 1992
"Quelques axiomes du Vaiśesika," in: Les Cahiers de Philosophie 14
("L'orient de la pensée: philosophies en Inde"), 95-110. 1996 "The correspondence principle and its impact on Indian philosophy," in:
Studies in the History of Indian Thought (Indo-Shisoshi Kenkyü) 8, 1-19. 1997
"Nāgārjuna's logic," in: Bauddhavidyasudhakarah. Studies in honour of Heinz Bechert on the occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. by Petra Kieffer-Pulz and
Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Swisttal-Odendorf (Indica et Tibetica, 30), pp. 29-37. 1999 Langage et réalité: sur un épisode de la pensée indienne, Turnhout (Bi
bliothèque de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses, 106.) Dwarikadas Shastri, Swami 1981
Tattvasangraha of Ācārya Shantaraksita, with the commentary Panjikā of Shri
Kamalshīla, critically edited, 2 vols., second edition, Varanasi. Granoff, Phyllis 1999
"Refutation as commentary: medieval Jain arguments against Samkhya," in: Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques 53(3) (Proceedings of the Conference
on Samkhya and Yoga, Lausanne, November 1998). 579-591. Jha, Ganganath: Sharma, Har Dutt; Patkar, M.M. 1965
The Tattva-Kaumudi. Vacaspati Misra's commentary on the Samkhya-Karikā. Translated into English by ... Ganganath Jha, with introduction and critical notes by ... Har Durt Sharma, revised and re-edited by ... M.M. Patkar.

Page #10
62 Johannes Bronkhorst Poona (Poona Oriental Series, 10.) Kumar, Mahendra 1990 Prameyakamala-martanda by Shri Prabha Chandra (a commentary on Shri Manik Nandi's Pareeksha Mukh Sutra), edited with introduction, indexes etc.. third edition, Delhi (Sri Garib Dass Oriental Series, 94.) 1991 Nyaya-Kumuda-Candra of srimat Prabhacandracarya, a commentary on Bhattakalankadeva's Laghiyastraya, edited with introduction, exhaustive annotations, etc., second edition, Delhi (Sri Garib Dass Oriental Series, 121.) Mainkar, T.G. 1964 The Samkhyakarika of Isvarakrsna, with the commentary of Gaudapada. Translated into English with notes, Poona (Poona Oriental Series, 9.) Oetke, Claus 1999 "Vaisesikasutra 1.2.3," in: Categorisation and Interpretation: Indological and comparative studies from an international Indological meeting at the Department of Comparative Philology, Goteborg University. A volume dedica ed to the memory of Gosta Lieben, ed. by Folke Josephson, Goteborg (Mei jerbergs arkiv for svensk ordforskning, 24.), pp. 23-41. Samghavi, Sukhalala, and Dosi, Becaradasa (ed.) 1924-1931 Sammatitarka-Prakaranam by Siddhasena Divakara, with Abhayadevasuri's commentary, Tattvabodhavidhayini, reprinted in two volumes, Kyoto 1984 (Rinsen Buddhist Text Series, VI-1 & 2.) Sarma, Vishnu Prasad 1922 Sankhyakarika Isvarakrsnaviracita, Matharacaryaviracita-Matharavrttisahita, Benares (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 296.) Satkarisarma Vangiya 1970 Samkhya-Karika of srimad isvarakrsna with ... the Jayamangala of Sri San kara, 2nd edition, Varanasi (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 296.) Solomon, Esther A. 1973 Samkhya-Saptati-Vrtti V,), Ahmedabad. 1973a Samkhya-Vrtti (V), Ahmedabad. 1974 The Commentaries of the Samkhya Karika - a study, Ahmedabad. Srinivasan, Srinivasa Ayya 1967 Vacaspatimisras Tattvakaumudi. Ein Beitrag zur Textkritik bei kontaminierter Uberlieferung, Hamburg (Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien, 12.) Takakusu, J. 1904 "La Samkhyakarika etudiee a la lumiere de sa version chinoise," in: Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient 4, 1-65 & 978-1064. Wezler, Albrecht, and Motegi, Shujun 1998 Yuktidipika. The most significant commentary on the Samkhyakarika, critically edited, Stuttgart (Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien, 44.)