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Speculations in the Medical Schools (CH. and each soul is associated with a separate citta. Each citta connects itself with a particular body by virtue of the fact that its manifes. tations (vrtti) are seen in that body. Thus the manifestations of the all-pervading citta of a soul cease to appear in its dying body and become operative in a new body that is born. Thus there is no necessity of admitting a subtle body (ātivāhikatvam tasya na mrsyāmahe).
The Vaiseșika also declines to believe in the existence of a subtle body, and assigns to it no place in the development of the foetus. The development of the foetus is thus described by Śrīdhara in his Nyāya-kandalia: “After the union of the father's semen and the mother's blood there is set up in the atoms constituting them a change through the heat of the womb, such that their old colour, form, etc. become destroyed and new similar qualities are produced; and in this way, through the successive formation of dyads and triads, the body of the foetus develops; and, when such a body is formed, there enters into it the mind (antaḥkaraña), which could not have entered in the semen-blood stage, since the mind requires a body to support it (na tu śukra-soņitāvasthāyām sarirāšrayatvān manasaḥ). Small quantities of food-juice of the mother go to nourish it. Then, through the unseen power (adrsta), the foetus is disintegrated by the heat in the womb into the state of atoms, and atoms of new qualities, together with those of the food-juice, conglomerate together to form a new body.” According to this view the subtle body and the mind have nothing to do with the formation and development of the foetus. Heat is the main agent responsible for all disintegration and re-combination involved in the process of the formation of the foetus.
The Nyāya does not seem to have considered this as an important question, and it also denies the existence of a subtle body. The soul, according to the Nyāya, is all-pervading, and the Mahābhārata passage quoted above, in which Yama draws out the puruṣa
1 Vācaspati's Tattva-vaisāradi, iv. 10. Reference is made to Mahā-bhārata, III. 296. 17, anguştha-inātram puruşam niscakarşa yamo balāt. Vācaspati says that puruşa is not a physical thing and hence it cannot be drawn out of the body. It must therefore be interpreted in a remote sense as referring to the cessation of manifestation of citta in the dying body (na cāsya nişkarşah sambhavati, ity aupacāriko vyakhyeyas tathā ca citeś cittasya ca tatra tatra vstty-abhāva eva niskarşārthah).
The Samkhya-pravacana-bhāsya, v. 103, says that the thumb-like puruşa referred to in Mahā-bhārata, III. 296. 17, which Yama drew from the body of Satyavān, has the size of the subtle body (linga-deha).
Nyāya-kandali, Vizianagram Sanskrit series, 1895, p. 33.
