I continue discussing the types of causes or kāraṇas in nyāya based on Śrī Devadatta Pātil Śarmā’s excellent Sanskrit book, Vidyādharī, which is a commentary to the Tarka-Sangraha. As a reminder, to determine whether a particular entity is a kāraṇa or cause for an effect that is to be produced, one must check whether it satisfies the following criteria —
- It must be present in the substratum before the effect is produced.
- It must be present in the substratum in which the effect is present
- It must always be present in the substratum in which the effect is present
I also explained the concepts of samavāya saṁbandha and tādātmya saṁbandha in the previous article. Here I will examine the concept of asamavāyi kāraṇa.
The first type of asamavāyi kāraṇa
The asamavāyi kāraṇa is that cause, which is present in the samavāyi kāraṇa by samavāya saṁbandha, and generates the effect by samavāya saṁbandha (in the samavāyi kāraṇa).
To understand this definition, lets take an example. As we have seen in the previous article, the clay is the samavāyi kāraṇa of the pot according to the following scheme:
Now, imagine that the pot was formed by joining together two hemispheres of clay. When the halves are brought together, the resulting contact or saṁyoga between them is also a cause for the pot. This is because without this contact between the clay halves, the pot cannot come into existence.
Saṁyoga, being a guṇa or quality, is present in the guṇi or the clay by samavāya saṁbandha. That is, this saṁyoga will be present wherever the clay is present (in its joined form), and it will only be lost if the clay is broken up. So, we have the following scheme:
The contact between the clay halves, which is situated in the samavāya kāraṇa, the clay, by samavāya saṁbandha, produces the effect, which is the pot. This identifies it as the asamavāyi kāraṇa. Or more broadly,
Contact between the threads of a cloth is the asamavāyi kāraṇa of the cloth. We can see this if we construct the following scheme:
The second type of asamavāyi kāraṇa
Now, there are two different types of asamavāyi kāraṇa. The first type was examined above. The second type can again be understood through an example.
Consider the size of the pot. This size is determined by the size of the clay; larger halves will produce larger pots and smaller halves, smaller pots. This means that the size of the clay is a cause of the size of the pot. What type of cause is it?
The problem is that the size of the pot and the size of the clay halves are not in the same adhikaraṇa or substratum, which violates one of the conditions for being a cause. The size of the clay (parimāṇa) is a quality of the clay, while the size of the pot is a quality of the pot. And yet, we know that the size of the clay halves determines the size of the pot, and so must be a cause of the size of the pot.
To overcome this problem of the cause and effect not being located in the same substratum, the solution in nyāya is to bring the size of the pot into the clay, where the size of the clay also is present, through the following scheme:
The pot-size is brought into the clay through paraṁparā saṁbandha – relation through sequential relata. This saṁbandha is written as follows: sva-samavāyi-samavāyitva-saṁbandha. Here, sva refers to the pot-size; sva-samavāyi refers to the pot, and the samavāyi of the pot is the clay. In this way, the pot-size is co-located with the clay-size, and can now be its effect.
Therefore, the second type of asamavāyi kāraṇa is defined as that cause, which is present by samavāya saṁbandha in the adhikaraṇa in which the effect it [the asamavāyi kāraṇa] produces is present by sva-samavāyi-samavāyitva-saṁbandha.
One can likewise understand how the color of the thread is the cause of the color of the cloth. First, the color of cloth is brought into the thread through sva (color)-samavāyi (cloth)-samavāyi (thread)-tva saṁbandha. Now, the color of the cloth is in the same adhikaraṇa as the color of the thread, and the color of the thread acts as its asamavāyi kāraṇa.
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