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NYAYA-VAISEȘIKA
243 personal God; but the voluntary agency ascribed to him would indicate that the notion of personality is not altogether excluded. No doubt, God here cannot be described as conceived in man's image, yet he is styled ātman which does suggest some kinship of nature with man. One special point about God as understood here is that his existence is established through inference and not through revelation as in the Vedānta. The doctrine thus gives prominence to reason here as elsewhere in accordance with its generally rationalistic spirit. If we exclude those that are based upon the special postulates of the system, the arguments are of a commonplace character and their consideration need not detain us long. We shall merely note the chief of them as set forth by Udayana. They are: (1) the world is an effect and like all other effects points, among other causes, to an efficient cause or agent who is by knowledge as well as power equal to the task of creating it; (2) there is observed in the created world physical order which indicates a controller or law-giver; and (3) the moral government of the world implies a governor who dispenses justice in accordance with desert. We may also refer to one other argument which is somewhat out of the way. In trying to establish the existence of God, Udayana takes full advantage of the lack of any proof to the contrary. He devotes one whole chapter out of the five in the Kysumāñjali to the examination of this point and shows how none of the pramānas can be adduced to make out that God does not exist. This is no doubt a point of only dialectical value; but it cannot be denied that it has some force, especially against those that make much of the opposite fact that the existence of God can never be proved.
It is necessary to say a few words now about the notion of 'cause' in the system. The cause should be antecedent to the effect, i.e. should exist in the just previous instant. It should also be an invariable antecedent (niyata-pūrvavrtti). This description, however, is too wide, for it includes in any particular case several factors which cannot be regarded as causes. Thus when a jar is being made, there is
See for instances, Prof. Keith: op. cit., p. 268.
