---
type: Concept
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: samavaya
title: Samavāya
iast: Samavāya
devanagari: समवाय
description: 'Inherence, the sixth Vaiśeṣika category: the eternal, single, all-pervading relation that binds inseparables, whole and parts, substance and quality, motion and its locus, universal and individual, into one thing; NOT ordinary conjunction (saṃyoga), NOT set-membership, NOT physical attachment.'
darshana:
- Vaiśeṣika
text_source: Vaiśeṣika Sūtra 7.2.26; Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha
tags:
- samavaya
- inherence
- relation
- vaisheshika
- ontology
not:
- term: conjunction (saṃyoga), ordinary contact
  why: Saṃyoga is a separable, non-eternal contact between two things that could exist apart (a book on a table); it is itself a quality and can be produced and destroyed. Samavāya binds things that cannot exist apart (a cloth and its threads, a substance and its colour) and is eternal and unproduced. Confusing the two treats an inseparable tie as if it were removable contact.
  instead: 'Define samavāya as the inseparable-inherence relation: the tie by which parts, qualities, motions, universals, and particularities inhere in what they belong to and cannot be prised loose; one eternal relation, not many, unlike the many produced conjunctions.'
- term: set membership or class inclusion
  why: Set membership is an abstract, extensional relation among elements and collections. Samavāya is a concrete ontological tie in the world that makes a red pot one thing rather than a pot plus a separate redness. It is what stops the whole and its parts from being two things loosely associated.
- term: glue, physical bonding, or spatial attachment
  why: Samavāya is not a physical connector holding pieces together in space; that would itself be a further relatum needing another relation (the regress Vaiśeṣika blocks by making inherence a single eternal category). It is the metaphysical inseparability of things that are found only together.
related:
- /concepts/saptapadartha.md
- /concepts/dravya.md
- /concepts/guna.md
- /concepts/samanya-vishesha.md
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Samavāya -- समवाय

**Not:** conjunction, set membership, physical glue

## What It Actually Means

Samavāya, inherence, is the sixth Vaiśeṣika category and the relation that does the ontology's hardest work: it binds together things that are found only in union and cannot exist apart. Five pairs are standard: whole and its parts, substance and its qualities, substance and its motions, universal and its individuals, and eternal substance and its ultimate particularity. In each, the second inheres in the first by samavāya, which is why a cloth is not merely its threads laid near one another and a pot is not a pot alongside a separate redness, but one qualified thing. Vaiśeṣika insists samavāya is eternal, single (one relation, not a different inherence in each case), and imperceptible-yet-inferable. It is carefully distinguished from saṃyoga, ordinary conjunction, which is a separable, producible contact between things that can exist apart. Samavāya is among the most untranslatable items in the whole OKF corpus: 'inherence' is a placeholder, and every looser rendering, contact, connection, belonging, imports separability the concept exists to deny.

## Audience Metaphor

Two magnets clicking together can be pulled apart; that is conjunction (saṃyoga). The wetness of water is not clicked onto the water and cannot be peeled off; the water and its wetness were never two things in the first place. Samavāya is that second, deeper kind of togetherness, the un-peelable belonging of a thing and what it cannot be without. English has no clean word for it, which is exactly why it is on this list.

## Citations

1. Vaiśeṣika Sūtra 7.2.26 -- see [references/vaisheshika-sutra.md](../references/vaisheshika-sutra.md)
2. Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha, samavāya distinguished from saṃyoga -- see [references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md](../references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md)
3. Śivāditya, Saptapadārthī -- see [references/saptapadarthi.md](../references/saptapadarthi.md)
