ABSTRACT
The movement from an undefined variable of the world to a well-defined object of the world is similar to how time is theorized by nyaya scholars. For nyaya scholars, time is a universal, singular and the substratum of the world. Theorizing the moment as a movement or action was a major distinction from time in its universal form, which was theorized as motionless or inactive. In traditional nyaya accounts, inactive, universal time was theorized as a substance, and the active and moving moment was atomized into the dynamic processes of separation and connection, where each identified as two tropes of that substance. In a beautifully worded 16th-century Telugu verse, translated by David Dean Shulman, time is personified as someone searching for buried treasure as the sun sets and the moon rises in the night sky. The verse stresses the requirement of an action or a movement in order for time to form relations with the world.
