Kanada

Works

• c. 150 BCEVaisheshika Sutra

  Aphorisms that sort reality into categories – substance, quality, motion, universal, particularity, inherence – and trace material things to atoms.

Position

Vaisheshika (“the school of distinctions”) is a realist analysis of everything knowable and nameable. Reality divides into six categories: substance, quality, motion, universal, particularity and inherence; later authors added absence. There are nine substances – earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self and mind. Material things are built from eternal, partless atoms, a theory fully worked out in later commentaries such as Prashastapada’s; particularity (vishesha) is what ultimately distinguishes one atom or self from another. The sutra opens by defining dharma as that from which prosperity and the highest good arise; liberation comes through knowledge of the categories. Vaisheshika later merged with Nyaya, on which Udayana and Gangesha built.

Life & context

Kanada (“atom-eater” or “grain-eater”), also called Kashyapa and Uluka, is the traditional author of the Vaisheshika Sutra; legend says he lived on grains gleaned from the fields. Nothing reliable is known of his life. The sutra itself is usually dated between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE; it grew over time, and its oldest layers may be earlier.

Further main works

• Prashastapada, Compendium of the Properties of the Categories (Padarthadharmasamgraha, c. 6th century CE; the classic exposition of the school)