As the Nyaya-Vais’e@sikas depended solely on experience and on valid reasons, they dismissed the Sa@mkhya cosmology, but accepted the atomic doctrine of the four elements (bhutas), earth (k@siti), water (ap), fire (tejas), and air (marut).  These atoms are eternal; the fifth substance (akas’a) is all pervasive and eternal.  It is regarded as the cause of propagating sound; though all-pervading and thus in touch with the ears of all persons, it manifests sound only in the ear-drum, as it is only there that it shows itself as a sense-organ and manifests such sounds as the man deserves to hear by reason of his merit and demerit.  Thus a deaf man though he has the akas’a as his sense of hearing, cannot hear on account of his demerit which impedes the faculty of that sense organ [Footnote ref 3].  In addition to these they admitted the existence of time (kala) as extending from the past through the present to the

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[Footnote 1:  Almost all the books on Nyaya and Vais’e@sika referred to have been consulted in the writing of this chapter.  Those who want to be acquainted with a fuller bibliography of the new school of logic should refer to the paper called “The History of Navya Nyaya in Bengal,” by Mr. Cakravartti in J.A.S.B. 1915.]

[Footnote 2:  I have treated Nyaya and Vais’e@sika as the same system.  Whatever may have been their original differences, they are regarded since about 600 A.D. as being in complete agreement except in some minor points.  The views of one system are often supplemented by those of the other.  The original character of the two systems has already been treated.]

[Footnote 3:  See Nyayakandali, pp. 59-64.]

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endless futurity before us.  Had there been no time we could have no knowledge of it and there would be nothing to account for our time-notions associated with all changes.  The Sa@mkhya did not admit the existence of any real time; to them the unit of kala is regarded as the time taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of space.  It has no existence separate from the atoms and their movements.  The appearance of kala as a separate entity is a creation of our buddhi (buddhinirma@na) as it represents the order or mode in which the buddhi records its perceptions.  But kala in Nyaya-Vais’e@sika is regarded as a substance existing by itself.  In accordance with the changes of things it reveals itself as past, present, and future.  Sa@mkhya regarded it as past, present, and future, as being the modes of the constitution of the things in its different manifesting stages of evolution (adhvan)_.  The astronomers regarded it as being clue to the motion of the planets.  These must all be contrasted with the Nyaya-Vais’e@sika conception of kala which is regarded as an all-pervading, partless substance which appears as many in association with the changes related to it [Footnote ref l].