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santarata and, therefore, that there is no logical bar against accepting the one or the other as the rūpaśleșa relation, although both are equally absurd. The Naiyāyika, however, cannot concede sāntarată between the relata since even the utmost closeness (sāntaratā) would not save him from the charge of the Buddhist who demands, under rūpaśleșa, nothing short of a 'total merger' or fusion of the relata entering into the relation. Nor does such closeness banish duality or the separateness of the relata in the composite whole resulting from such admission. Acceding to a 'total merger' would inevitably land him in the forbidden region of identity, to the delight of the Advaitin.
A further dissection into the implications of the rūpašleşa relation is attributed to the Buddhist dialectitian: If the relata are interfused, is the fusion, he asks, total (sarvātmanā) or partial (ekadesena)? If it is total, he answers, then the fusing relata become a single mass of identity. An aggregation, or a plurality, of atoms (āņūnām pindah) becomes on this hypothesis, indistinguishable from, or identical with, just a single atom (aņumātrah) and then, on this score, the question of relation does not at all arise in the case of a single entity. If, on the other hand, the interfusion (śleșa) is partial (ekadesena)—that is, if a part of a relatum comes into contact with another part of the other relatum-then the problem arises whether each of the related parts is identical with (ātmabhūtah) or different from (parabhūtaḥ) each of the corresponding unrelated parts in the relational whole. It cannot be said, he adds, that the related and the unrelated parts, within a relation, are identical. If it is so, a part of the
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