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NYAYA-VAISEȘIKA
231 though our eyes and ears are open, we do not see or hear has been made the basis for concluding that there should be a different and common aid to all knowledge which the system terms manas. Sometimes we purposely look at a watch, for example; but we do not yet see the time, for our manas has meanwhile come to be otherwise occupied. It may thus be described as exercising a double function: It helps the self
but at the same time acts as a check upon it by narrowing its field to a single object or a single group of objects. It is through the manas that the relation of the self to the senses and the body is established; and through them the self comes to be related to the external world. Association with it is, indeed, the basic cause of bondage ; for though the body and the senses also accompany the transmigrating self, they are, unlike the manas, com
birth. The dravyas do not by themselves explain the whole universe. They serve merely as its framework, and we should now refer to their various properties and the relations into which they may enter. In other words, we have now to consider the categories..other than dravya. By the term 'category' (padārtha) here we have to understand, with one exception alone to which we shall soon draw attention, the several groups or classes into which objects can be divided and not mere modes of predication. They are guņa, karma, sāmānya, višeşa, samavāya and abhāva; and, together with dravya, they constitute the seven categories of the Vaišeşika, which are also accepted in the Nyāya.3 Originally only six of them appear to have been recognized, the last, viz. abhāva, being unknown. We have already spoken about dravya, and we shall now say a few words about each of the remaining six:
Guna ('Quality'). These are attributes which pertain to one or more dravyas and do not, as in Buddhism, by themselves stand for a thing. Though thus dependent upon dravya, they are conceived as altogether distinct from it; for they can by themselves be known and as such must, according to INS. I. i. 16.
* Bandha-nimittam manaḥ: NM. p. 499. 3 NSB. I. i. 9.
• Vaišesika-sútra, I. i. 4.
