On the Pervasion of hetu in paksa

Abstract

In connection with the first condition of hetu (logical reason) some classical Chinese and Japanese treatises dealing with Buddhist logic refer to an opponent who argues that every paksa-dharma necessarily pervades the paksa and there cannot be a paksa-dharma that exists only in a part of the paksa. Logically speaking, however, the position of the opponent, it seems to me, can be that of Dignaga. In order to understand the position, the present paper proposes a mass interpretation, according to which the paksa is considered to be a mass of a certain kind of substance designated by a mass term such as “a cup of blue water”, and the paksa-dharma is considered a property of the mass, such as “blue”.