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CHAPTER VII
209
danger of its becoming an identity and, thereby, playing the Naiyāyika into the hands of the Advaitin. For if the Naiyāyika were to accept even a partial interpenetration of the terms and their relation, there would be no stopping short, at any rate according to the Vedāntin, of being driven to a total merging of the two, rendering, thereby, the relation itself a superfluous entity. This would put him on the highroad to absolutism in which not merely the duality of the terms in a relation but also the entire scheme of reality will become a seamless' coat. Athalye is, therefore, perfectly right, from the Naiyāyika's point of view, when he observes that "....it is the theory (of samavāya) that makes them (the Naiyāyikas) so intensely realistic in marked opposition to idealistic schools like Vedānta".'
The other important characteristics of samavāya are that it is eternal (nitya), one (eka) and all-pervasive (sarvavyāpaka or vyāpaka).
Thus' according to the Nyāya ontology a relation whether conjunctive or necessary—is an objectively real and
1. "Relations exist only in and through a whole which cannot
in the end be resolved into relations and terms. And', 'together' and 'between' are all in the end senseless apart from such a whole." Additional Notes, PL, Vol. I, p. 112.
Notes: 50. 2. TS, with DNB, Notes, p. 9, f. 8. 3. These involve one another.
What is meant by 'eternality' here is uncausedness (akāranatva) or improducibility and, therefore, indestructibility: na hyasya kiñcit karanam pramāņata upalabhyate iti. PB, p. 697. This is intended to be aimed at avoiding the fallacy of infinite regress (anavastha) inasmuch as what is produced needs a productive agent and the pro
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