Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s19.81

v2.c24.s19.81

Ākāśa is a simple, continuous, infinite substance, and is the substratum of sound. The qualities of colour, taste, smell and tangibility do not belong to it. By the process of elimination sound is proved to be the distinguishing quality of ākāśa.¹ It is inactive (niṣkriya). All corporeal objects are found conjoined with it.² The atoms which are infinitely small cannot make up a magnitude by coming together or touching each other. If they stand apart from one another and yet are joined somehow so as to constitute a system, it can only be through the medium of ākāśa. The atoms unite, but not continuously. That which binds together the atoms, though not itself atomic, is the ākāśa. If ākāśa were also discrete, *i.e.* capable of being analysed into atoms, then we shall have to assume some other connecting tissue which is not atomic. Ākāśa is eternal, omnipresent, supersensible, and has the qualities of individuality, conjunction and disjunction. Ākāśa fills all space, though it is not space itself, since it cannot affect or operate on things without entering into special relations with them and thereby having sound produced in it. That which sustains the positional relations and order of discrete things is called dik, though it is not space itself, if the latter means room or place, which is ākāśa. The distinction between ākāśa and space is admitted in view of the fact that while ākāśa is regarded as the material cause of the special quality of sound, space is the general cause of all effects.