Vaisheshika

Vaisheshika (vī'shəshē`kə): see Hindu philosophy.

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Vaisheshika

One of the six orthodox systems, or darshans, of Indian philosophy. Founded c. 2nd–3rd century AD, it fused with Nyaya in the 11th century, forming the Nyaya-Vaisheshika school. Vaisheshika attempts to identify, inventory, and classify the entities that present themselves to human perception. It lists seven categories of being. It holds that the universe's smallest, indivisible, indestructible unit is the atom, which is made active through God's will, and that all physical things are a combination of the atoms of earth, water, fire, and air.

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Vaisheshika 

one of the six orthodox Hindu systems of ancient Indian philosophy.

According to tradition, the founder of the Vaisheshika system was Kanada; the fundamental work of the system, the Vaisheshika Sutra (the final text of which dates to the first half of the first millennium), is attributed to him. Another important source of the Vaisheshika is the Padartha-dharma-sangraha —commentaries to the Vaisheshika Sutra. The Vaisheshika attained its greatest development in southern India during the ninth through 14th centuries.

According to the teaching of the Vaisheshika, everything that exists is included in six categories: substance, quality, action, the general, the particular, and the inherent. Substance, which expresses the essence of a thing, is the main category. The nine substances (earth, water, light, air, ether, time, space, spirit, and mind), which are endowed with qualities (permanent characteristics) and actions (transient characteristics), make up the entire existing universe. The Vaisheshika maintained an atomistic viewpoint, according to which the first four substances were combinations of atoms (anu) —invariable spherical material particles. Although atoms were not created by anyone and exist eternally, they are passive: they start to move because of an invisible force, adrishty, and then enter into combinations under the direction of the world spirit Brahma, which subjects the material world to the eternal cyclical process of creation and destruction. The sensuously apprehended world exists in time, space, and ether and is governed by a special universal moral law (dharma).

REFERENCES

Radhakrishnan, S. Indiiskaia filosofiia, vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1956—57. (Translated from English.)
Keith, A. B. Indian Logic and Atomism: An Exposition of the Nyaya and Vaiçeşika Systems. Oxford, 1921.
Mishra, U. Conception of Matter According to Nyaya-Vaiçeşika. Allahabad, 1936.

E. I. GOSTEEVA