Sarvadarshanasangraha 12.64

12.64

tatrādyaḥ sāvadyaḥ/ kāryakāraṇabhāvasya bhedasamānādhikaraṇatvenaikasminn asaṃbhavāt/

"(a.) It cannot be the first, because wherever the relation of cause and effect is found there must be a difference, and therefore these two cannot reside in the same subject [i.e., authoritativeness cannot cause itself]. (b.) It cannot be the second, because if knowledge, which is a quality, were the cause of authoritativeness, it would have to be a substance, as being an intimate cause.[39] (c.) It cannot be the third, because 'authoritativeness' cannot properly be 'produced' at all,[40] whether we call it a general characteristic (upādhi) or a species (jāti);[41] for if we call it an upādhi, it is defined as the absolute non-existence of any contradiction to a certain kind of knowledge which does not possess the nature of recollection;[42] and this cannot be produced, for we all allow that absolute non-existence is eternal; and still less can we speak of its being produced, if we regard it as a species. (d.) Nor can it be the fourth, for wrong knowledge [as well as right knowledge] is a particular kind of knowledge, and the instrumental causes which produce the general are included in those which produce the particular,[43] just as the general idea 'seed,' as applied to 'tree,' is included in the particular seed of any special tree, as, e.g., the Dalbergia Sisu; otherwise we might suppose that the particular had no instrumental cause at all. Your definition would therefore extend too far [and include erroneous as well as true knowledge]; for non-authoritativeness, which Vedantists and most Mīmāṃsakas allow to be produced by something external, must also be considered as residing in a particular knowledge [i.e., a wrong knowledge] produced [in part] by the instrumental causes which produced the right knowledge. (e.) As for your fifth view, we ask whether by being produced by the instrumental causes only which produced right knowledge, you mean to include or exclude the absence of a 'defect'? It cannot be the former alternative; because the followers of the Nyāya who hold that authoritativeness is proved by something external [as inference, &c.], would at once grant that authoritativeness is produced by the instrumental causes of knowledge combined with the absence of a 'defect.' Neither can it be the latter alternative; for, inasmuch as it is certain that the absence of a 'defect' is found combined with the various instrumental causes, this absence of a 'defect' is fixed as by adamantine glue to be a cause of right knowledge, since right knowledge will always accompany its presence, and be absent if it is absent,[44] and it will at the same time be not an unimportant condition.[45] If you object that non-existence (or absence) cannot be a cause, we reply by asking you whether non-existence can be an effect or not? If it cannot, then we should have to allow that cloth is eternal, as its "emergent non-existence" or destruction would be impossible. If it can be an effect, then why should it not be a cause also? So this rope binds you at both ends. This has also been said by Udayana [in his Kusumāñjali, i. 10]—