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III. V]
AVIDYA IN THE VAISESIKA SCHOOL
misperception of a cow for a horse. A cow is possessed of many wellknown distinctive features that can easily differentiate it from a horse. But due to the defects of the sense-organs, one can have a blurred vision wherein a cow is wrongly intuited as a horse. This intuition is further strengthened by the stimulation of a past memory-impression of a horse, and the result is a full-fledged cognition of a horse. Religious demerit also plays its part in the production of error. This is an instance of perceptual error. The wrong inference of fire from vapour mistaken for smoke is given as an instance of inferential error. The miscomprehension of body, sense-organs and mind as the self is also a case of wrong or perverted cognition (viparyaya). In one word, perverted cognition consists in mistaking one thing for another. This conception is identical with the conception of the Nyaya school.
We are perhaps beating about the bush. The fact is that the Vaiseṣikasūtra or even Prasastapāda does not put forth the basic problem in clear terms, although it is clearly implied in their expositions. We have indulged in this apparently irrelevant digression in order to make the background of the Vaiseṣika thought clear and vivid in order to see its implication. We shall now refer to the statement of Prasastapāda on worldly life and emancipation (apavarga), which will clearly show the Vaiseṣika attitude towards the problem of ultimate nescience. But before that we shall refer to the very brief account of the Vaiseṣikasūtra itself about samsara and mokṣa. The Vaiseṣikasūtra says that one acquires dharma and adharma by one's actions inspired by desire and hatred, and that these dharma and adharma are responsible for the cycle of birth and death.1 Adṛṣṭa is responsible for the conjunction of soul, sense-organs, mind, and the sense-objects, and this conjunction is responsible for the experience of pleasure and pain, which is an essential factor of worldly life. When the external activity of the mind is stopped and it is in undisturbed union with the soul, there is absence of pain, and this is called yoga which may mean either the arrestation of mental activity or the self-possession of the spirit. But so long as the last vestiges of adṛṣṭa are not destroyed, there cannot be final emancipation. The Vaiseṣikasutra says 'Absence of conjunction of the soul with the body, and the non-origination of new body on the exhaustion of adṛṣṭa is mokṣa (final emancipation).'4 The Sūtra also refers to the transcendental knowledge born of meditation (samadhi). Prasastapāda puts this Vaiseṣika position tinged, of
III
1 See VS, VI. 2. 14-15.
2 Cf. ätmendriya-mano-'rtha-sannikarṣāt sukhaduḥkhe-V. 2. 15. 3 tadanarambha atmasthe manasi sarirasya duḥkhābhāvaḥ sa yogaḥ
V. 2. 16.
4 tadabhāve samyogabhāvo 'prädurbhāvaś ca mokṣaḥ.-V. 2. 18. 5 See IX. I. 11-15. See also PB, p. 553: asmadvisiṣṭānāṁ tu yoginām.
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