ABSTRACT
Gotama is the name of the sage who systematized the philosophy of Nyaya in the form of sutras or aphorisms. At the very beginning of the Vaisesika sutras Kanada asserts that the proper object of his philosophy is to expound dharma, so that men may have abhyudaya and attain nisreyasa. The Self—the basis of consciousness and experience—though, according to a doctrine peculiar to the Nyaya-Vaisesika school, its own consciousness is rather an adventitious than an essential characteristic. The Nyaya-Vaisesika philosophy, to sum up the preceding analysis, postulates seven categories—the substances, their properties, and their relations. The Nyaya-Vaisesika system regards cause and effect, though there must always be the relation between an invariable antecedent and consequence, as two distinguishable conditions of things. The Vaisesika begins with the conception of being and develops its ideas from that; the Nyaya begins with knowing.
