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Relations
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condition does not hold in the case cited above, the relation is not inherence. Nor again can it be supposed that inseparability alone will suffice to distinguish inherence from other relations. Of course the cases considered above will be excluded by this condition alone, but it fails in the case of the compresence of several qualities in a substance. For instance, sugar is hard, white and sweet. The qualities in question coinhere in sugar and are inseparable from sugar and from one another. The relation of these qualities to sugar is certainly inherence, as sugar contains them as its contents and also because the latter are inseparable from sugar. But the relation between the qualities is not regarded as inherence, though they happen to be inseparable. The relation of inseparability between the qualities is due to their inherence in sugar from which they are not separable and thus their mutual inseparability is derived from the former. It inseparability were the sufficient condition of inherence there would be nothing to prevent the relation between the qualities being regarded as inherence. The relation is not inherence, but co-inherence (ekārthasamavāya), because the relation of container and content is found to be absent between the qualities themselves. The concept of inherence is thus found to be a complex one. It is a relation between terms, which are inseparable and which stand as container and content. That it does not hold between entities unrelated as container and content, e.g., time and space, follows as a corollary,
What is the proof of inherence ? What is the source of its knowledge? These are the questions which naturally arise and require an answer. According to the Naiyāyika inherence is an object of perception. 'A' directly perceives a piece of linen as related to the yarns constituting it. Here inherence is between a whole and its parts. With equal immediacy again we intuit a substance and its sensible qualities as related to one another and so also do we intuit a cow and the cow-universal in it as related. As the relation is not anything else than inherence, the intuition of the relation is to be equated with the intuition of inherence. The Vaišeșika does not agree with the Naiyāyika in this matter. Inherence is a matter of inference according to the former. The Vaišeșika contends with great force of logic that the perception of a relation depends upon the perception of the terms. If the
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