A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c35.99

v2.c35.99

The plurality of causes strains the definition of a cause, and undermines the relation of Vyápti between an effect and a cause. Any particular cause (causal aggregate) still indicates the effect, but not vice versa. The earlier Nyáya (down to Váchaspati and Jayanta) obviated the plurality, as we have seen, by introducing distinctive marks in the effect such as would indicate a single specific cause (कार्यवैल्लक्षण्य or कार्यभेद indicating कारणवैल्लक्षण्य or कारणभेद). Some indeed went further and held that when the antecedent causal assemblages differ in kind, the effect phenomena, though apparently the same, do really differ specifically (or in kind)—कारणवैजात्यात् कार्यवैजात्यम्. But the Nyáya discards this hypothesis; the fire is the same, though the possible causes (or causal aggregates) differ, e.g., the lens, the drill, etc. But the effect phenomenon to which we attend is not the only effect;—in the case of plurality of causes, we must carefully examine the accompaniments of the effect, i.e., the sum of effects, and the examination will shew some distinctive or specific circumstance or accompaniment which will enable us to definitely determine the particular assemblage of causal conditions that must have preceded in the case under examination. This is the device of the earlier Nyáya as well as of the Buddhists, as we have seen; but the later Nyáya doubts the practicability as well as the theoretical validity of such a step on an unrestricted assumption of the plurality of causes, and feels troubled by the circumstance that no effect for which more than one cause (or causal aggregate) can be assigned, can be regarded as a mark or sign (Gamaka or Vyápya) of any one of the causes in particular. Accordingly, some adherents of the later Nyāya advanced the proposition that when more than one causal aggregate can be supposed for any effect, the latter is a mark or sign (Gamaka or Vyāpya), not of any one of the causal aggregates in particular, but of one or other of them ; and the absence, not of one such cause, but of each and every one of them, alone indicates the absence of the effect. A cause therefore should be defined to mean *one or other* of the possible alternative aggregates which, being given, the effect follows invariably and unconditionally. If we ask what is the defining mark (or quiddity) of the cause (कारणतावच्छेदक), we are told that it is *one-or-otherness* (अन्यतमत्व), and nothing else : others cut the Goridan knot by assuming that the different possible causes of the same effect possess a common power or efficiency (अतिरिक्तशक्ति), or a common ‘form’ (जातिसौक्ष्म), which accounts for the production of a common effect. The latter is therefore a sign or mark of this power (शक्ति), or this form (जातिसौक्ष्म), which is manifested by each of the causal aggregates. This hypothesis (कल्पना), they hold, is simpler and more plausible than the hypothesis of specific differences latent in the apparently identical effect of a plurality of causes (कारणवैजात्यात् कार्यवैजात्यम्).