Vaisheshika Sutras

01The sage of the grain

Kanada means "grain eater". Tradition says the rishi lived on grains left in the fields after harvest, and the name suits a teacher of the smallest particles. His sutras begin "athato dharmam vyakhyasyamah" and define dharma as that from which come both worldly well-being and the highest good. Knowledge of the padarthas, he says, leads to liberation. His darshana is also called Aulukya, from Uluka, another name tradition gives him.

02Dharma first

A book about atoms opens with dharma, and Kanada means it. The first three sutras say: now we shall explain dharma; dharma is that from which worldly good and the highest good both come; the authority of the Veda rests on its being that teaching. Knowledge of the padarthas is part of dharma because right knowledge of things ends the false knowledge that binds. So the cosmology that follows serves the same goal as the rites. The sixth adhyaya lists sacred acts, abhisheka, fasting, brahmacharya, life in the guru's house, vanaprastha, yajna and dana among them, as producing adrishta, the unseen merit that ripens later.

03Six categories and the atom

Kanada names six padarthas: dravya (substance), guna (quality), karma (motion), samanya (the universal), vishesha (the particular that makes each eternal thing distinct, from which the darshana takes its name) and samavaya (inherence). Later teachers added abhava, absence, as a seventh. The nine substances are earth, water, fire, air, akasha, time, space, the Self and the mind. The first four are built from paramanus: two atoms join as a dvyanuka, three dvyanukas as a tryanuka, the smallest thing the eye can see, a speck in a sunbeam.

04Nine substances

Each of the five elements has its special quality, perceived by one sense. Earth has smell, water taste, fire colour, air touch, and akasha has sound, which is why akasha is inferred though never seen. Earth, water, fire and air exist as eternal atoms and as the things made from them. Akasha, time and space are each one, all-pervading and eternal. Selves are many, one for each body, eternal and all-pervading. Manas is atomic, one to a body. Because the mind is so small, two perceptions never arise at exactly the same instant, though they seem to, as a needle seems to pierce a hundred lotus petals at once.

05Qualities and motions

An early sutra, the fifth or sixth of the book depending on the recension, lists seventeen qualities: colour, taste, smell, touch, number, size, separateness, conjunction, disjunction, remoteness, nearness, cognitions, pleasure, pain, desire, aversion and effort. Prashastapada later counted twenty-four, adding heaviness, fluidity, viscosity, sound, merit, demerit and the tendency to persist. The very next sutra names five motions: throwing upward, throwing downward, contracting, expanding and going. A quality belongs to a substance and has no quality of its own. A motion is momentary and causes conjunction and disjunction. These definitions, short and exact, became the vocabulary in which later Indian thinkers of every school described the physical world.

06The unseen at work

Kanada watched the world closely. The fifth adhyaya asks why a flame leaps upward and wind blows sideways, why a needle creeps toward a magnet, why water rises in the trees. Thunder, it says, comes from the meeting and parting of the waters in the cloud. Where no visible cause explains a motion, Kanada names adrishta, the unseen force of the merit and demerit of beings: the first motion of the atoms at creation and of the mind entering a new body are both its work. Later teachers, Prashastapada first among them, said plainly that it is the will of Ishvara that sets adrishta moving at the start of each creation.

07One school with Nyaya

Prashastapada's Padartha Dharma Sangraha became the standard exposition, and Shridhara and Udayana wrote on it. Shridhara's commentary is the Nyaya Kandali, Udayana's the Kiranavali. Over the centuries Vaisheshika and Nyaya were taught together as Nyaya-Vaisheshika: Nyaya supplied the method of knowing, Vaisheshika the map of what is known. Students today usually meet Kanada through the Tarka Sangraha and Vishvanatha's Bhasha Pariccheda, which present both together.

08Seven padarthas, learned by heart

Ask a student in a Sanskrit pathashala what exists, and the answer comes in Annambhatta's words: dravya, guna, karma, samanya, vishesha, samavaya and abhava, seven padarthas. That one line of the Tarka Sangraha carries Kanada's whole map, with the seventh category the later school added. Students then learn the nine substances, the twenty-four qualities and the five motions by rote before they read Kanada's own sutras. Vaisheshika's terms also run through Ayurveda, which describes medicines by their substance, quality and action. Charaka, the great physician, uses the same words.

What it contains

1. 1
   Adhyayas 1–2

   Dharma is defined, the six padarthas are named, and the substances, qualities and motions are listed and told apart. The second adhyaya examines earth, water, fire, air and akasha one by one, then time and space. It shows how each element is known by its special quality.

2. 2
   Adhyayas 3–4

   The Self is proved from the life-signs of breath, the blinking of the eyes, desire and effort, and the mind from the fact that knowledge arises one thing at a time. The fourth adhyaya argues that atoms are eternal and that visible bodies are built from them, and sorts bodies into the born-of-womb, egg-born and others.

3. 3
   Adhyayas 5–6

   Motion in bodies, in thrown objects, in falling water, in the flame and the wind, with adrishta named where no seen cause is found. The sixth adhyaya turns to the unseen merit of Vedic acts and the rules of gift and purity, and closes on liberation through ending the karma that binds.

4. 4
   Adhyayas 7–10

   Qualities such as colour, size and number are examined, then the universal and the particular, and inherence, the bond that holds a quality in its substance. The last adhyayas treat how perception and inference work and how causes produce effects, ending again on the authority of the Veda.

Famous verses

अथातो धर्मं व्याख्यास्यामः

Now, therefore, we shall explain dharma.Vaisheshika Sutra 1.1.1

यतोऽभ्युदयनिःश्रेयससिद्धिः स धर्मः

Dharma is that from which come worldly prosperity and the highest good.Vaisheshika Sutra 1.1.2

तद्वचनादाम्नायप्रामाण्यम्

The authority of the Veda comes from its being that teaching (of dharma).Vaisheshika Sutra 1.1.3 (Chandrananda's recension)

पृथिव्यापस्तेजो वायुराकाशं कालो दिगात्मा मन इति द्रव्याणि

Earth, water, fire, air, akasha, time, space, the Self and the mind: these are the substances.Vaisheshika Sutra 1.1.4 (Chandrananda's recension; 1.1.5 in Shankara Mishra's Upaskara)