Vaiśeṣika Sūtra

[10][11] Another important secondary work on Vaiśeṣika Sūtra is Maticandra's Dasha padartha sastra which exists both in Sanskrit and its Chinese translation in 648 CE by Yuanzhuang.

[12] The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra is written in aphoristic sutras style,[13] and presents its theories on the creation and existence of the universe using naturalistic atomism,[14] applying logic and realism, and is one of the earliest known systematic realist ontology in human history.

[15] The text discusses motions of different kind and laws that govern it, the meaning of dharma, a theory of epistemology, the basis of Atman (self, soul), and the nature of yoga and moksha.

[20] Scholars had doubted its authenticity, given the inconsistencies in this manuscript and the quotes in other Hindu, Jaina and Buddhist literature claiming to be from the Vaisheshika Sutra.

[20][21] These newer manuscripts are quite different, more consistent with the historical literature, and suggests that, like other major texts and scriptures of Hinduism, Vaiśeṣika Sūtra too suffered interpolations, errors in transmission and distortion over time.

[4][5][8] The critical edition studies of Vaisheshika Sutras manuscripts discovered after 1950, suggest that the text attributed to Kanada existed in a finalized form sometime between 200 BCE and the start of the common era, with the possibility that its key doctrines are much older.

[9][5] Multiple Hindu texts dated to the 1st and 2nd century CE, such as the Mahavibhasa and Jnanaprasthana from the Kushan Empire, quote and comment on Kanada's doctrines.

[27] Its ideas are known for its contributions to "inductive inference", and often coupled with the "deductive logic" of the sister school of Hinduism called the Nyaya.

[29][30] The text states:[31] Several traits of substances (dravya) are given as color, taste, smell, touch, number, size, the separate, coupling and uncoupling, priority and posterity, comprehension, pleasure and pain, attraction and revulsion, and wishes.

[42][43] In this chapter, Kanada mentions various natural phenomena such as the falling of objects to ground, rising of fire upwards, the growth of grass upwards, the nature of rainfall and thunderstorms, the flow of liquids, the movement towards a magnet among many others; he then attempts to integrate his observations with his theories, and classifies phenomenon into two: those caused by volition, and those caused by subject-object conjunctions.