Book Title: Grihya Sutras
Author(s): Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

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Page 2576
________________ it adhyâya, 2 PÂDA, 11. . 1 383 admitted that the forms of extension belonging to quaternary compounds are not minuteness and shortness, but bigness (mahattva) and length. The same happens when many simple atoms or many binary compounds or a simple atom and a binary compound combine to produce new effects. Well, then, we say, just as from spherical atoms binary compounds are produced, which are minute and short, and ternary compounds which are big and long, but not anything spherical ; or as from binary compounds, which are minute and short, ternary compounds, &c., are produced which are big and long, not minute and short ; so this non-intelligent world may spring from the intelligent Brahman. This is a doctrine to which you—the Vaiseshika-cannot, on your own principles, object. Here the Vaiseshika will perhaps come forward with the following argumentation? As effected substances, such as binary compounds and so on, are engrossed by forms of extension contrary to that of the causal substances, the forms of extension belonging to the latter, viz. sphericity and so on, cannot produce similar qualities in the effects. The world, on the other hand, is not engrossed by any quality contrary to intelligence owing to which the intelligence inherent in the cause should not be able to originate a new intelligence in the effect. For non-intelligence is not a quality contrary to intelligence, but merely its negation. As thus the case of sphericity is not an exactly parallel one, intelligence may very well produce an effect similar to itself. This argumentation, we rejoin, is not sound. Just as the qualities of sphericity and so on, although existing in the cause, do not produce corresponding effects, so it is with 1 I. e. in all cases the special form of extension of the effect depends not on the special extension of the cause, but on the number of atoms composing the cause (and thereby the effect). ? In order to escape the conclusion that the non-acceptance of the doctrine of Brahman involves the abandonment of a fundamental Vaiseshika principle. Digitized by Digized by Google

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