A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c34.247

v2.c34.247

Parináma-váda versus Árambha-váda : Charaka's view of the formation of a new quality or a new substance is based on the Sánkhya teaching as to the conservation and transformation of Energy, and brings chemical synthesis in a line with evolutionary change (परिणाम). On this view, a new substance may arise by spontaneous or isomeric change, *i.e.*, by the inter-play of Energies within the system of any given substance, in the absence of any action from without. New qualities like new substances are only readjustments of the old, and continual changes are going on by spontaneous disintegration and recombination. Opposed to this evolutionary view of chemical synthesis is the Nyáya-Vaiseshika doctrine of Árambha-váda, according to which no change of substance or quality, no effect, in short, can take place except by the action of one component element (substance or quality) on another. A binary molecule, for example, cannot possess any ‘specific quality’ (विशेषगुण) of a kind not represented in each of the two component atoms. In the cosmic process, no atom can exist free and uncombined with another atom, and every ‘specific quality’ in a substance can be ultimately analysed into the union of two ‘specific qualities’ of the same class in two ultimate particles which cannot be further divided. A single colour, smell or taste in a single particle, until it can link itself on to another specific quality of its own class in a second particle, cannot characterise any substance formed by the union of these particles as material causes. Hence an Earth-atom cannot unite with an Ap-atom, to form a new substance of which both the particles must be equally regarded as material causes. At any rate, such a compound, if effected, would be smell-less, as of the two constituent atoms, only one, viz., the Earth-atom, possesses smell. A compound of Earth and Vāyu would be smell-less, colourless and tasteless, and so on. The Nyāya-Vaiseshika does not deny that there may be compounds of different Bhūtas, nor does it deny the causal operation of specific qualities as efficient or energising (dynamic) causes (उपष्टम्भक, निमित्तकारण), but it refuses to place these compounds on the same footing as compounds of isomeric modes of the same Bhúta; and it accepts the ‘material’ causality, in such cases of only one of the Bhútas, regarding the others as co-efficients’ (निमित्तकारण).