ions as well as the effect, the shoot.
How a special seed-moment became endowed with such special
effectiveness is to be sought in other causal moments which
preceded it, and on which it was dependent. Ratnakirtti wishes to
draw attention to the fact that as one perceptual moment reveals
a number of objects, so one causal moment may produce a number
of effects. Thus he says that the inference that whatever has
being is momentary is valid and free from any fallacy.

It is not important to enlarge upon the second part of
Ratnakirtti's arguments in which he tries to show that the production
of effects could not be explained if we did not suppose

___________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: The distinction between vicious and harmless infinites
was known to the Indians at least as early as the sixth or the seventh
century. Jayanta quotes a passage which differentiates the two clearly
(_Nyayamanjari_, p. 22):

"_mulak@satikarimahuranavastham hi du@sa@nam.
mulasiddhau tvarucyapi nanavastha nivaryate._"

The infinite regress that has to be gone through in order to arrive
at the root matter awaiting to be solved destroys the root and is hence
vicious, whereas if the root is saved there is no harm in a regress
though one may not be willing to have it.]

161

all things to be momentary, for this is more an attempt to refute
the doctrines of Nyaya than an elaboration of the Buddhist
principles.

The doctrine of momentariness ought to be a direct corollary
of the Buddhist metaphysics. But it is curious that though all
dharmas were regarded as changing, the fact that they were all
strictly momentary (_k@sa@nika_--i.e. existing only for one moment)
was not emphasized in early Pali literature. As'vagho@sa in his
_S'raddhotpadas'astra_ speaks of all skandhas as k@sa@nika (Suzuki's
translation, p. 105). Buddhaghosa also speaks of the meditation
of the khandhas as kha@nika in his _Visuddhimagga._ But from the
seventh century A.D. till the tenth century this doctrine together
with the doctrine of arthakriyakaritva received great attention at
the hands of the Sautrantikas and the Vaibha@sikas. All the
Nyaya and Vedanta literature of this period is full of refutations
and criticisms of these doctrines. The only Buddhist account
available of the doctrine of momentariness is from the pen of
Ratnakirtti. Some of the general features of his argument in
favour of the view have been given above. E