Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 61

The Nature and the Cause of the World
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in this manner each property becomes something akin to a bearer-of-properties while the form of its sign or state different at a different time becomes something akin to a property of this bearer-of-properties.
To other Buddhists this position appeared opposed to the preaching of Buddha. So they maintained that the existence of each property is confined to the present alone. Thus they said that whatever possesses existence must be but present. How can existence belong to something that is pastor something that is future ? Certainly, the meaning of existence is to perform a function while such a function can be performed in the present period alone. Thus in the Buddhist tradition the existence of a property was posited tbrough denying the existence of a bearer-of-properties while existence in the present period alone was attributed to a property through denying to it existence in all the three phases of time.
When the advocates of Sarvāstivāda attributed to a property existence in all the three phases of time they appear to have worked under the influence of the Sānkhya or other advocates of the doctrine of an eternalelement-undergoing-change.17 But how does the Sautrāntika, according to whom a property is confined to the present alone, account for the continuation of a cause-effect-series ? - this too is an important question. Thus he says that the indivisible aggregate of colour, taste, smell, touch etc. that existed at an earlier moment perishes as soon as it comes into existence; and in between the moment of its production and the moment of its destruction there intervenes no moment of its persistence. Hence the earlier existing momentary entity is automatically perishable without requiring a cause for its destruction, and its destruction means the production of another momentary entity. This constitutes the rule of uninterrupted succession. For there obtaios no temporal gap in between the two momentary entities in question. And so the two can be treated as mutually uninterrupted. The thus
current of momentary entities is called 'series of momentary entities (in brief, moment-series).' The properties like colour, taste etc. which are amenable to sense-perception constitute the then running visible series, but there also exist invisible series of the same sort.
How would the Buddhists, who thus considered the world to be divided into multifarious parts in respect of time as well as space, account for the
17 For this see the views of the four masters Dharmatrāta etc, described in Tattva. sangrahapañjikā (p. 504).
cf. Vibhutipäda aphorisms 13-14 in Yoga sūtra along with bhāşya.
See History of Philosophy - Eastern and Western, Volume I, Buddhist philos ophy (IX) B, Historical Introduction to the Indian Schools of Buddhism by Vidhushekhara Bhattacarya, p. 173.