Samavaya

(“inherence”) Fundamental category
in the worldview of the NyayaVaisheshika philosophical school.
This school conceives of the world as
made up of atomistic parts, which are
connected to form larger things. The
fundamental function of samavaya is
as a subtle glue to connect various
things: wholes and their parts, substances and their attributes, motions
and the things that move, and general
properties and their particular
instances. It also connects both pleasure and pain to the Self. Thus
samavaya is the fundamental thing
holding the universe together. The
philosophical problems raised by the
idea of inherence—particularly the
claim that inherence was one single
principle, and not a collection of
things—were ultimately responsible
for the rise of Navyanyaya school,
which attempted to explain these relationships in a more sophisticated way.