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Verse 17
Distinction (uyatireka) establishes the logical connection by contrariety: “The hill has no smoke (major term) because it has no fire (middle term), as a lake,” – the absence of the major term (sādhya) is attended by the absence of the middle term (hetu or sādhana) - absence-in-heterologue (vaidharmya).
Homogeneousness (sādharmya) and heterogeneousness (vaidharmya) are relative to each other and always go together. The middle term (hetu) is qualified by both - homogeneousness (sādharmya) and heterogeneousness (vaidharmya).
Smoke has invariable togetherness (avinābhāva) with fire: smoke means existence of fire, and there is no smoke without fire. Fire, on the other hand, has no invariable togetherness (avinābhāva) with smoke as there can be fire without smoke. It cannot be said that fire must have smoke, and that without smoke there is no fire.
But existence and non-existence have mutual (ubhaya) invariable togetherness (avinābhāva); non-existence is always accompanied by existence and existence is always accompanied by non-existence. This is because existence and non-existence, both, are qualifying attributes (višeşaņa) of the same substratum, i.e., the entity (dharmi).
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