The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c10.85

c10.85

Váchaspati notes that to-day's sunrise and yesterday's sunrise, the rise of the moon and the tide in the ocean, the relative positions of the stellar constellations, are instances of Vyápti (invariable concomitance) between phenomena which are neither related as cause and effect nor as genus and species. Jayanta adds the conjunction of sunset with the appearance of the stars; of ants moving in procession (with their eggs) with the approach of the rains; of the rising of the constellation Agastya (Canopus) above the horizon with the drying-up of rivers; of the spring-tide with the full moon; and dismisses as sophistical and far-fetched the Buddhist attempt to explain all these cases by means of causality We have seen that the Nyáya and the Mímánsá reduce most of these conjunctions to cases of co-effects of the same cause, co-effects which may be either simultaneous or successive.