The positive background of Hindu sociology / by Benoy Kumár Sarkár ; with appendices by Brajendranáth Seal.

  • Benoy Kumar Sarkar
Date:
1914-<21>
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The positive background of Hindu sociology / by Benoy Kumár Sarkár ; with appendices by Brajendranáth Seal. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    directions, and each of these again gives off another, and so on, so that sound may be said to expand by successive concentric spherical layers, even as the Kadambakoraka (the so-called bud of the nauclea kadamba) expands by successive concentric spherical layers of filaments which shoot forth from one another. Oil the first of these two hypotheses, the air-wave implied in the transmission of sound is of the nature of what we call trans- verse waves ; - on the second, of the nature apparently of longitudinal waves. In any case, it is clear that the orthodox Mimansa view of Savara Svami that the air-wave constitut- ing physical sound means a series of mere conjunctions and disjunctions of air particles with rarefaction and condensation, (S'avara, Vakyapadiya) implies longitudinal waves sirftfiTgssn^T ERrm'nr vqreT'prRr: Visvanatha, Bb&sha Paric.hheda, Sloka 16?. xrftilqm qwmTfwg:» ri^i: sfs: ;i wm si^PriTim i ?Nq: m%)*t#i3i: i qy aiaHfl TO (Udyotakara, 11,2,14). As the momentum of the impact series (which constitutes the efficient cause of the sound-wave) grows feebler and feebler in the course of transmission through the air particles, the sound at last dies away. Gangesa in the Chintamani holds that the propagation is not from molecule to molecule, but travels in ever-expanding circles as in water-waves, perhaps in spherical layers by compression of masses of air ; and these air-waves, the vehicles of sound, are exceedingly swift. This explains the velocity of sound, =3 ^=q5|T%riyw^- vi 5j®4k-mIt >jRCTi snips'>nvri^sTC y yyra i fifrj frlurnTT^-^wiiii^^fH 1(5) f^7cprt3js^: yq jriu ^sf'Brm’Trrq 3irwm^3i?i: svra 3i%3^ yyyyn ^fr^irrar 31351^*333 ^r^i^Pivay' yirayyN i 31^1^3 VI *I-cp'Hd-Hinj3)5)0 33T 31133 3J3^y 3^^1313)3^ ^3ji^f5j 3!TT*3V;n ?T3?3 ^3131^ gvumT fin (Gangesa, Tattva Chintamani). But how does the first sound produce the second, the second the third, and so on ? At every step, the efficient cause, the impact of some vibrating molecule against a contiguous molecule of air, must be posited, and this is equally applicable to a sound produced by a sound, (31^'j13]3j) as to one produced by conjunction and disconjunction (nijnRj or nornra). In other words, the sound-wave ( 3]s^wtr ) in Akasa necessarily implies an air-wave The Mimansaka view, then, that explains the propagation of sound by the transmission of the original oscillatory motion through the successive layers of air by means of successive impacts or pressures producing conjunction and disjunction of air molecules ^3133131: —Savarabhashya), or rarefaction and condensation (sryy—Vakyapadiya), is also implied in the Nyaya-Vaiseshika doctrine of the sound-wave (sjs^ypnrvt), the difference being that in the latter the air-wave, which is conceived as a mode of serial motion is only the vehicle or medium of propagation of a so-called sound-wave in Akasa which is not itself a mode of motion. This is what we find expressly and elaborately formulated in the later Nyaya-vaiseshika (vide Gangesa, Chintamani, supra). Section 2. ANALYSIS OF VIBRATOUY MOTION, E.G., OF A BELL (IN AIR). The molecules of a bell vibrate when the bell is struck. The question is—what the nature of this vibratory movement? Vatsyayana and Udyotakara answer that when the hand strikes the bell, some of the molecules are displaced (from their stable position,—i.e., there is karma in the molecules), and thus a Sanskara (here a kinetic Sanskara, momentum) is generated 3)*w-riRsgifin:, Vatsyayana and Va- chaspati), and the molecules swing forward under the action of this Sanskara, until 46