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CHAPTER VII
entities, as the Buddhist maintains, then Prabhācandra asks, atom A is unconnected with atom B, and atom B with atom C, and atom C in turn with atom D and so on in any concrete object, say, a pitcher. Being a conglomeration of such unconnected units or atoms, it ought not to be a 'pitcher' at all useful for fetching or holding water in. Similarly when a tender bamboo is pulled with a string tied to it, it ought not, on the Buddhist theory, to bend as it does. Such phenomena are inexplicable unless the atoms composing the objects are admitted to be cohesive, that is, capable of being connected or combined to become concrete and useful objects. The Buddhist cannot deny the occurrence of such phenomena and such undeniability amounts, according to the Jaina philosopher, to a covert admission of a relational factor in the texture of objective experience.
1. See supra, pp. 213-214.
2. See PKM, p. 514.
Alluding to Dharmakirti's objection' to pāratantryasambandha, one of the only two possible kinds of relations conceded--conceded, of course, only for disproving, since no relation is accepted to be intrinsically valid-by the Buddhist logician, Prabhācandra remarks that far from being untrue it (pāratantrya-sambandha) is a matter of common knowledge (pratititaḥ suprasiddhatvät). However, Prabhācandra accepts its reality with the qualification that the essential nature of päratantrya is unification of the relata (ekatvaparinatilakṣanapāratantryasyārthānām)," not mere 'dependence' as described by the Buddhist. In the eventual negation of the dependence-relation by the Buddhist, Prabhacăndra
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