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OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
outer world, but they do not elevate it to the rank of a universal. Cow-ness for instance stands for something objective, but it is for them only a special disposition of pudgala which disappears with the cow in which it is found. The Buddhists on the other hand deny it altogether, explaining it away as merely ideal (p. 204). What is there for instance, they ask, that is common to a mountain and a mustard seed which are both classified as 'earth'? They point out that its admission in the Nyaya-Vaiśeşikä sense leads to all sorts of absurdities. First of all, it involves the difficulty of accounting satisfactorily for the presence of the one in the many. Again we cannot say whether the so-called universal abides everywhere (sarva-sarva-gata) or is confined only to the respective particulars (vyakti-sarva-gata). In the former case only chaos would be the result, because a cow would then be characterized not only by cow-ness, but also by horse-ness, etc., which are everywhere by supposition; in the latter, it would be difficult to account for its sudden appearance in a new particular which springs into existence at a spot where the universal in question was not found previously and whereto it could not have moved from the place in which it was, being by hypothesis incapable of movement. The Buddhist admits that we do regard certain things as similar rather than others; but that, in his opinion, is due to a subjective interference and has to be explained negatively as signifying their difference from the rest without implying any actual agreement, contrast being sufficient for knowing things. When we describe an animal as a cow, we do not mean to assert cow-ness of it as a positive predicate; we rather deny of it horse-ness and such other features.2 The main part of the Nyaya-Vaiśeşika answer to such objections is that they are based upon a spatial view of universals-that they are located in the particular. But the particular is not the seat of the universal; it is only the means of revealing it (vyañjaka), so that we may view it as being everywhere or only where the corresponding particulars
are.3
1 See Parikṣā-mukha-sutra, iv. 4. Cf. SDS. pp. 13-14.
3 NM. pp. 312-13.
