athyate._"

_Nyayamanjari_, pp. 550 ff.]

381

but the establishment of the existence of wholes refutes the
argument that jati should be denied, because it involves the conception
of a whole (class) consisting of many parts (individuals). The
class character or jati exists because it is distinctly perceived by
us in the individuals included in any particular class. It is eternal
in the sense that it continues to exist in other individuals, even
when one of the individuals ceases to exist. When a new individual
of that class (e g. cow class) comes into being, a new
relation of inherence is generated by which the individual is
brought into relation with the class-character existing in other
individuals, for inherence (_samavaya_) according to Prabhakara
is not an eternal entity but an entity which is both produced
and not produced according as the thing in which it exists is
non-eternal or eternal, and it is not regarded as one as Nyaya
holds, but as many, according as there is the infinite number of
things in which it exists. When any individual is destroyed, the
class-character does not go elsewhere, nor subsist in that individual,
nor is itself destroyed, but it is only the inherence of
class-character with that individual that ceases to exist. With
the destruction of an individual or its production it is a new
relation of inherence that is destroyed or produced. But the
class-character or jati has no separate existence apart from the
individuals as Nyaya supposes. Apprehension of jati is essentially
the apprehension of the class-character of a thing in relation to
other similar things of that class by the perception of the common
characteristics. But Prabhakara would not admit the existence of
a highest genus satta (being) as acknowledged by Nyaya. He
argues that the existence of class-character is apprehended because
we find that the individuals of a class possess some common
characteristic possessed by all the heterogeneous and disparate
things of the world as can give rise to the conception of a separate
jati as satta, as demanded by the naiyayikas. That all things are
said to be _sat_ (existing) is more or less a word or a name without
the corresponding apprehension of a common quality. Our experience
always gives us concrete existing individuals, but we
can never experience such a highest genus as pure existence or
being, as it has no concrete form which may be perceived. When
we speak of a thing as _sat_,