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TATTVA-KAUMUDI
properties, cooperate and bring about such a grand and stupendous structure as our Universe ?"
The answer is that it is a very common fact that two or more substances, though mutually contradictory, do cooperate towards a single end;-c.g. the wick and the oil-both taken separately are as much against the action of one another as towards fire, but when they are together they help to enliven the fire. In the same manner, though the Attributes are mutually counteractive, yet when combined, they act towards a single end, supplying each other's deficiencies.
The necessity of postulating three different forces is further supported by another reason. We see that in Nature there are three distinct properties of happiness', 'unhappiness and delusion'. All other properties are reducible under these three heads. Again we find that these are properties so much opposed to one another that all could never be the product of a single cause. Thus it is necessary to postulate three different forces or constituent elements of Nature, to which severally we could trace the three distinct properties. To these three constituents of Nature we give the names_Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. We find in the universe the above three properties, and as all the properties of the Product must be a direct resultant of a like property in its cause, we arrive at - the conclusion that the cause of the Universe--Nature---muse be imbued with the three Attributes.
So much for the action of the Guņas. We now turn our attention towards the all-important Prakrtı, Nature-the Key-stone of the Sānikhya Philosophy.
What, then, is this Prakrti, Nature? Does it stand for the Theistic God? Or for the Bauddha “Sensations"? Or does it correspond t8 the Vedāntic "Māyā''? To all this 'we reply-- 'It is all these, and it is none of these. It resembles the Vedāntic Māyā in as much as it is the one root of the Uni
