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Relations
rather in the opposite direction. People think that the branches are of the tree and in the tree, the yarns are in the cloth and so on. The Jaina does not believe in a separate relation between parts and whole. The whole is according to him nothing but the parts arranged in a particular manner. The arrangement implies a change in the original substances, but the change is from separateness to unification. The change, however, is qualitative and functional and does not connote numerical difference, which might necessitate a relation. If the conception of relation be necessary from the point of view of discursive thought it should be termed 'identity-in-difference'. In fact, relations are nothing outside the terms themselves, and as such, they are all internal and integral to the terms. As regards the notion of one containing the other, we have seen how it varies with the variation of our angle of vision. The Vaiśeşikà would make the whole a content of the parts, and others would think the parts to be the contents of the whole. Truly speaking, the notion of in-ness does not presuppose a relation at all. It is only a way of our thought or of linguistic expression, which has no objective implication. 'Sugar is white' is a proposition, which can be stated in a different form e.g., "whiteness is in sugar'. The notion of inness here does not indicate the relation of container and content. Pre-non-existence is held to be beginningless and so beginninglessness may be supposed to be in pre-non-existence. Even the Vaiśeşika does not suppose that the notion of in-ness has here an independent reference to an objective content or a relation. It may be urged that the relation is one of substantive and adjective, or subject and predicate. But the latter is not an independent relation; rather it is only symptomatic of an objective relation, which is, however, incapable of being posited between the terms under consideration. The conclusion is irresistible that the notion of in-ness or linguistic usage based on such notion is only the conventional way of expressing the fact of identity of the two terms. As it is the universal truth, identity is always to be understood as identity of differents-in other words, as identity-in-difference.
We have sought to prove that relation has no status outside the terms. It is the terms themselves which play the part of relation. In fact, this conclusion has been endorsed by the later exponents of Nyaya, who reduce all relations ultimately to the
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