Is’vara and Salvation.

Nyaya seeks to establish the existence of Is’vara on the basis of inference.  We know that the Jains, the Sa@mkhya and the Buddhists did not believe in the existence of Is’vara and offered many antitheistic arguments.  Nyaya wanted to refute these and prove the existence of Is’vara by an inference of the samanyato-d@r@s@ta type.

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[Footnote 1:_Jnanasamavayanibandhanamevatmanas’cetayit@rtvam_, &c.  See Nyayamanjari, pp. 432 ff.]

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The Jains and other atheists held that though things in the world have production and decay, the world as a whole was never produced, and it was never therefore an effect.  In contrast to this view the Nyaya holds that the world as a whole is also an effect like any other effect.  Many geological changes and landslips occur, and from these destructive operations proceeding in nature it may be assumed that this world is not eternal but a result of production.  But even if this is not admitted by the atheists they can in no way deny the arrangement and order of the universe.  But they would argue that there was certainly a difference between the order and arrangement of human productions (e.g. a jug) and the order and arrangement of the universe; and therefore from the order and arrangement(sannives’a-vis’i@s@tata) of the universe it could not be argued that the universe was produced by a creator; for, it is from the sort of order and arrangement that is found in human productions that a creator or producer could be inferred.  To this, Nyaya answers that the concomitance is to be taken between the “order and arrangement” in a general sense and “the existence of a creator” and not with specific cases of “order and arrangement,” for each specific case may have some such peculiarity in which it differs from similar other specific cases; thus the fire in the kitchen is not the same kind of fire as we find in a forest fire, but yet we are to disregard the specific individual peculiarities of fire in each case and consider the concomitance of fire in general with smoke in general.  So here, we have to consider the concomitance of “order and arrangement” in general with “the existence of a creator,” and thus though the order and arrangement of the world may be different from the order and arrangement of things produced by man, yet an inference from it for the existence of a creator would not be inadmissible.  The objection that even now we see many effects (e.g. trees) which are daily shooting forth from the ground without any creator being found to produce them, does not hold, for it can never be proved that the plants are not actually created by a creator.  The inference therefore stands that the world has a creator, since it is an effect and has order and arrangement in its construction.  Everything that is an effect and has an order and arrangement has a creator, like the jug.  The world is an effect and has order and arrangement and has therefore a creator.  Just as the potter knows all the purposes of the jug that he makes,