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VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
connexion; for conjunction also is a kind of connexion 1.Moreover, as substances, qualities, and so on are apprehended as standing in the relation of identity, the assumption of the samavâya relation has really no purport.
In what manner again do you-who maintain that the cause and the effect are joined by the samavâya relationassume a substance consisting of parts which is an effect to abide in its causes, i. e. in the material parts of which it consists? Does it abide in all the parts taken together or in each particular part?—If you say that it abides in all parts together, it follows that the whole as such cannot be perceived, as it is impossible that all the parts should be in contact with the organs of perception. (And let it not be objected that the whole may be apprehended through some of the parts only), for manyness which abides in all its substrates together (i. e. in all the many things), is not apprehended so long as only some of those substrates are apprehended. Let it then be assumed that the whole abides in all the parts by the mediation of intervening aggregates of parts2.-In that case, we reply, we should have to assume other parts in addition to the primary originative parts of the whole, in order that by means of those other parts the whole could abide in the primary parts in the manner indicated by you. For we see (that one thing which abides in another abides there by means of parts different from those of that other thing), that the sword, for instance, pervades the sheath by means of parts different from the parts of the sheath. But an assumption of that kind would lead us into a regressus in infinitum, because in order to explain how the whole abides in certain
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A conclusion which is in conflict with the Nyâya tenet that samyoga, conjunction, as, for instance, of the jar and the ground on which it stands, is a quality (guna) inherent in the two conjoined substances by means of the samavâya relation.
So that the whole can be apprehended by us as such if we apprehend a certain part only; analogously to our apprehending the whole thread on which a garland of flowers is strung as soon as we apprehend some few of the flowers.
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