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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
The fact is that, owing its origin to an earlier scientific creed, the symbolical poetry of the Rig Veda, the
try to get over the difficulty by restricting the scope of their second category to twelve classes of objects, namely, (i) soul, (ii) body, (iii) sense-organs, (iv) artha (which comprises colour, taste, smell touch, sound, intellect, happiness, desire, hatred and effort), (v) buddhi (intellect), (vi) mana (mind), (vii) pravritti (application through speech, intellect or body), (viii) dosa, (fault which means either affection, hatred or infatuation), (ix) pretya-bhava (life after death), (x) phala (fruit or reward which is either principal or secondary), (xi) dukha (pain), and (xii) apavarga (freedom from pain). But the result is a hopeless muddle, since the second category has reference to the objects of knowledge, and as such embraces all things that can be known, hence all that exists, and cannot, therefore, be confined to twelve objects alone. The illogical nature of the classification is also apparent from the fact that it altogether leaves out of account many of the most important things to be known_israva, bandha, samvara, nirjará ana moksha--and lays undue emphasis on such unimportant matters as touch, taste, and the like. The repeated enumeration of pain, hatred and intellect under different heads is also an instance of extreme logical clumsiness.
The Vaikesikas lay down the following padarathas or predicables :
(i) substance, (ii) attribute, (iii) action, (iv) general features, or genus,
(v) special characteristics, or species, (vi) combination, and, . (vii) non-existence,
But the arrangement is more like an enumeration of what are called categories in the systems of Aristotle and Mill than tattvas, Accordingly, the writer of the learned introduction to Major B, D. Basu's edition of the Vaiseșika Sutras of Kanáda felt it as a pious duty to apologise for the short-comings of this system. He writes :
“ The Vaišeşika philosophy looks at things from a particular. well-defined point of view. It is the point of view of those to whom the lectures of Kanada were addressed. It is not, therefore, so
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