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VARIOUS VIEWS ON SVABHĀVA: A CRITICAL
SURVEY
RAMKRISHNA BHATTACHARYA
Introductory Before the systemization of the six orthodox (āstika) and three heterodox (nāstika) schools, the 'prehistory' of Indian philosophy seems to have been concerned with one focal problem, viz. who or what is the first cause (jagatkārana, lit. the cause of the world)? Several alternatives (more than two dozens) appear to have been proposed long before and after the philosophical ferment that rocked northern India in the sixth-fifth centuries BCE.' We first hear of six rival doctrines (each claimed by its proponents as the first cause) in Sv. Up. 1.2. They are kāla (time), svabhāva (lit. own being), niyati (destiny), yadrochā (accident), bhūtāni (natural elements) and purusa (primeval man, or the self ātman). Most of them and those that were proposed afterwards, such as aņu (atom), karman (activity), pradhāna (universal matter), etc., were either assimilated in the philosophical systems which appeared in their wake, or were neglected and forgotten by later philosophers. A few of such first causes originally proposed, however, lingered for many centuries.
One such first cause proposed is svabhāva. The word is often encountered in Sanskrit literature. We are here concerned with the technical sense of the word. Very different and even contradictory meanings have been suggested in the philosophical works right from the Mokşadharma section of the Mbh., Sāntiparvan, which may be justly treated as an independent work of philosophy, down to the commentators on the SS (e. g. Agnicit Purusottama and Rāmatirtha). Sanskrit dictionaries, big or small, offer no help in finding out the meaning of svabhāva in different contexts. Here I propose to deal with this question with reference to the major philosophical writings of ancient India.
