Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/321

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THE ATOMIC PHILOSOPHY OF KANADA
265


INDIAN SCENERY.

The first compound is of two atoms; the next consists of three double atoms, and so on. The mote visible in the sunbeam is thus a compound of six atoms. In this way two earthly atoms acting under an unseen law constitute a double atom of earth; three binary atoms constitute a tertiary atom; four tertiary atoms make a quaternary atom; and so on to gross, grosser, and grossest masses of earth. In this manner the great earth is produced, the great water is thus produced from aqueous atoms, great light from luminous atoms, and great air from aerial atoms.

Kanada recognizes seven categories of objects: substances, quality, action, community, particularity, coherence, and non-existence.

Under the first of these categories, the nine substances of Kanada are earth, water, light, air (all eternal in atoms, but transient and perishable in aggregates), ether (which transmits sound, and which has no atoms, but is infinite, one, and eternal), time, space (neither of which is material, and therefore is not compounded of atoms), soul, and manas (or the internal organ). Light and heat are considered as only different forms of the same essential substance. Ether (akasa) conveys sound; and manas, or the internal organ, is supposed to be extremely small, like an atom.