---
type: Concept
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: guna
title: Guṇa
iast: Guṇa
devanagari: गुण
description: 'Quality, the second Vaiśeṣika category: the (twenty-four, per Praśastapāda) qualities that inhere in substances, colour, taste, number, contact, cognition, pleasure, effort, and the rest; NOT the Sāṃkhya triguṇa (sattva-rajas-tamas), NOT ''virtue'' or moral merit, NOT a strand or a Spinozan mode.'
darshana:
- Vaiśeṣika
school_scope: 'CRITICAL cross-bundle collision. Vaiśeṣika guṇa (an inhering quality, one of ~24) is a completely different concept from the Sāṃkhya-Vedāntic triguṇa (the three constituents of prakṛti: sattva, rajas, tamas) found in dharma-foundation, yoga-darshana, and cosmology-creation. Do not merge. The identical word ''guṇa'' names two unrelated schemes.'
text_source: Vaiśeṣika Sūtra 1.1.6; Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha
tags:
- guna
- quality
- vaisheshika
- ontology
- attribute
not:
- term: the Sāṃkhya triguṇa (sattva, rajas, tamas)
  why: This is the most dangerous conflation for this term. The triguṇa are the three constituent strands of prakṛti in Sāṃkhya-Yoga-Vedānta cosmology, whose interplay produces the manifest world. Vaiśeṣika guṇa are qualities (colour, number, contact, cognition, and about twenty more) that inhere in substances. The schemes share only a syllable; nothing else transfers.
  instead: 'Define Vaiśeṣika guṇa as an inhering quality: one of roughly twenty-four attributes (rūpa colour, rasa taste, saṃkhyā number, saṃyoga contact, buddhi cognition, sukha pleasure, prayatna effort, and so on) that reside in a substance via inherence and cannot themselves possess qualities or motion. Never equate it with sattva-rajas-tamas.'
- term: virtue or moral merit
  why: 'In ethical contexts guṇa can mean a good quality or virtue, and puṇya covers merit. Here guṇa is an ontological category, a property inhering in a substance, morally neutral: ''redness'' and ''number-two'' are guṇas exactly as much as pleasure is. The moral sense is a different usage.'
- term: a rope-strand or a mode of one substance
  why: '''Guṇa'' literally can mean a strand, and Sāṃkhya exploits that image; Vaiśeṣika does not. A Vaiśeṣika guṇa is not a strand of some deeper stuff nor a Spinozan mode of a single substance, but a distinct real category dependent on, yet ontologically other than, the substance it inheres in.'
related:
- /concepts/saptapadartha.md
- /concepts/dravya.md
- /concepts/samavaya.md
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Guṇa -- गुण

**Not:** the triguna, virtue, a strand

## What It Actually Means

Guṇa, quality, is the second Vaiśeṣika category: a property that inheres in a substance and gives it its determinate character. Praśastapāda fixes the standard count at twenty-four, including the sensible qualities (colour, taste, smell, touch, sound), the numerical and dimensional qualities (number, measure, separateness, contact, disjunction), and, strikingly, the qualities of the self (cognition, pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, effort, plus dharma, adharma, and mental impressions). A guṇa depends on its substance and inheres in it through samavāya; qualities do not themselves possess further qualities or undergo motion. The great hazard for this term is not internal but cross-bundle: 'guṇa' is also the word for the three constituents of prakṛti (sattva, rajas, tamas) in Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta, an entirely different doctrine about the fabric of the manifest world. The Vaiśeṣika guṇa and the triguṇa are unrelated theories wearing one word, and an AI that blends them will produce confident nonsense in both directions.

## Audience Metaphor

'Charge' means one thing to an electrician and another to a cavalry officer; sharing the word buys them no shared physics. So with guṇa. To the Vaiśeṣika it is an attribute in an object, this pot's redness, its weight, its very number. To the Sāṃkhya it is one of three cosmic strands weaving all of nature. Same sound, different universe. Splicing them is like wiring a horse charge into a circuit diagram.

## Citations

1. Vaiśeṣika Sūtra 1.1.6 -- see [references/vaisheshika-sutra.md](../references/vaisheshika-sutra.md)
2. Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (the twenty-four qualities) -- see [references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md](../references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md)
3. Cross-bundle warning: triguṇa in dharma-foundation v0.1, yoga-darshana v0.2, cosmology-creation v0.7 -- a wholly different scheme; never merge
4. Cross-bundle note: the triguṇa's doctrinal source-school treatment now has its own dedicated file, sankhya-darshana v0.13's guna-samkhya.md -- still unrelated to this Vaiśeṣika ontological category, shared word only
