Aptamimansa Critique of an Authority Bhasya

Author(s): Samantbhadracharya, Akalankadev, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Jagruti Dilip Sheth Dr

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INTRODUCTION
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permanent and somehow momentary. Here the advocate of the thesis is the Sānkhya philosopher but he is summarily disposed of - perhaps because he is not an ideal choice; (in the immediately preceding section the transcendentalist was summarily disposed of but that was because his position does not deserve much serious scrutiny). The most valuable portion of the present section is Samantabhadra's criticism of the Buddhist empiricist who is held out as the advocate of the antithesis in question. Really speaking, this criticism is a continuation of that urged in the immediately preceding section. But in that section the problem of change was taken up as a part of the broader problem of numerical identity, which itself was in its turn a part of the still broader problem of identity in general. In the present section the problem of change has been discussed independently and in its numerous ramifications.
Section 4 In this section the problem discussed is whether there is the relation of distinctness or non-distinctness between a composite body and its component-parts, a quality and the thing qualified by this quality, a universal and the particular possessing this universal. The thesis asserts that the relation in question is that of absolute distinctness, the antithesis that it is that of absolute non-distinctness; as against them, the synthesis asserts that the relation is somehow that of distinctness and somehow that of non-distinctness, The advocate of the thesis is the NyāyaVai esika empiricist, that of the antithesis the Buddhist empiricist. The importance of this section lies in its comprehensive criticism of the position adopted by the Nyāya-Vaiseșika school on certain vital questions of ontology; for so far as Samantabhadra's present criticism of the Buddhist is concemed it is not so illuminating as that launched by him in the preceding two sections (and it is even doubtful whether the Buddhist case – at least as understood by the school of Dinnāga and Dharmakīrti - has been reported correctly). Another thing to be noted is that the problem of the relation between quality and the thing qualified has been left almost untouched in the present section - perhaps to be taken up in the next; moreover, what we have called the problem of the relation between a composite body and its component-parts has been called by Samantabhadra himself the problem of the relation between an effect and its cause, but the justification of our suggestion lies in the fact that the only case of causation considered in the present section is that of the causation of a composite body out of its component-parts.