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Vaisesika lays its main emphasis on self-consciousness as a fact of knowledge.  Both the Nyaya and the Vais’e@sika sutras admit the existence of atoms, but all the details of the doctrine of atomic structure in later Nyaya-Vais’e@sika are absent there.  The Vai’se@sika calls salvation ni@hs’reyasa or mok@sa and the Nyaya apavarga.  Mok@sa with Vais’e@sika is the permanent cessation of connection with body; the apavarga with Nyaya is cessation of pain [Footnote ref l].  In later times the main points of difference between the Vais’e@sika and Nyaya are said to lie with regard to theory of the notion of number, changes of colour in the molecules by heat, etc.  Thus the former admitted a special procedure of the mind by which cognitions of number arose in the mind (e.g. at the first moment there is the sense contact with an object, then the notion of oneness, then from a sense of relativeness—­apek@sabuddhi—­notion of two, then a notion of two-ness, and then the notion of two things); again, the doctrine of pilupaka (changes of qualities by heat are produced in atoms and not in molecules as Nyaya held) was held by Vais’e@sika, which the Naiyayikas did not admit [Footnote ref 2].  But as the Nyaya sutras are silent on these points, it is not possible to say that such were really the differences between early Nyaya and early Vaise@sika.  These differences may be said to hold between the later interpreters of Vais’e@sika and the later interpreters of Nyaya.  The Vais’e@sika as we find it in the commentary of Pras’astapada (probably sixth century A.D.), and the Nyaya from the time of Udyotakara have come to be treated as almost the same system with slight variations only.  I have therefore preferred to treat them together.  The main presentation of the Nyaya-Vais’e@sika philosophy in this chapter is that which is found from the sixth century onwards.

The Vais’e@sika and Nyaya Literature.

It is difficult to ascertain definitely the date of the Vais’e@sika sutras by Ka@nada, also called Aulukya the son of Uluka, though there is every reason to suppose it to be pre-Buddhistic.  It

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[Footnote 1:  Professor Vanamali Vedantatirtha quotes a passage from Sa@mk@sepas’a@nkarajaya, XVI. 68-69 in J.A.S.B., 1905, and another passage from a Nyaya writer Bhasarvajna, pp. 39-41, in J.A.S.B., 1914, to show that the old Naiyayikas considered that there was an element of happiness (sukha) in the state of mukti (salvation) which the Vais’e@sikas denied.  No evidence in support of this opinion is found in the Nyaya or the Vais’e@sika sutras, unless the cessation of pain with Nyaya is interpreted as meaning the resence of some sort of bliss or happiness.]

[Footnote 2:  See Madhava’s Sarvadars’anasa@mgraha-Aulukyadars’ana.]

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