Indian Logic and Atomism: An Exposition of the Nyaya and Vaiceshika Systems c19.s2.13

c19.s2.13

where shall we class the desire and activity which are manifested in creation? The point was evaded by some authorities who denied desire and activity, asserting that his pure and unimpeded intelligence constituted his creative power, thus reducing to intelligence the only special quality of God. But the modern Nyāya¹ on the other hand ascribe to God the possession of eternal happiness, thus bringing themselves into harmony with scripture and doubtless with popular belief. The same period is responsible for a determined effort to ascribe to God a body for the purpose of creation despite the refusal of Çrīdhara and Udayana to countenance this folly.² On one theory our merit may endow God with such a body as in an incarnation, just as a man's merit provides a body for his wife; another view makes the atoms, or the ether to be the body of God, the former being a natural development of Çrīdhara's parallel between the body and the atoms, though Çrīdhara does not press the parallel; yet another conceives the creator to be formed of two bodies in creation, himself and the object to be created, while yet another holds that God obtains a body for himself in the same way as does a demon by possessing some human medium.³ To such idle follies was popular theology reduced.