---
type: Concept
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: dvyanuka-tryanuka
title: Dvyaṇuka / Tryaṇuka
iast: Dvyaṇuka / Tryaṇuka
devanagari: द्व्यणुक / त्र्यणुक
description: 'Dyad and triad: the composition mechanism by which two atoms form a dyad (dvyaṇuka) and three dyads form a triad (tryaṇuka), the smallest perceptible unit, building the gross world up from imperceptible atoms; NOT molecular chemistry, NOT a physical bonding theory, NOT physicalist emergence.'
darshana:
- Vaiśeṣika
text_source: Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (composition of dvyaṇuka and tryaṇuka)
tags:
- dvyanuka
- tryanuka
- dyad
- triad
- vaisheshika
not:
- term: molecular chemistry (atoms bonding into molecules)
  why: The dyad-triad scheme is a metaphysical account of how imperceptible, partless atoms give rise to a perceptible world, answering a puzzle about magnitude (how can the sizeless build the sized?), not an empirical chemistry of bonds and valences. The triad is defined as the first perceptible unit, a threshold of perceptibility, not a molecule with a formula.
  instead: 'Present dvyaṇuka/tryaṇuka as the composition ladder: two eternal atoms make a (still imperceptible) dyad; three dyads make a triad, the first minimally perceptible thing, from which gross bodies are built. The scheme explains perceptibility and magnitude, not chemical combination.'
- term: a physical theory of bonding forces
  why: What holds the composites together and initiates composition is not a physical force but conjunction (saṃyoga) actuated, at the start of a world-cycle, by unseen moral desert (adṛṣṭa) and the will of Īśvara. Reading it as a force-law imports mechanics the account explicitly replaces with moral-cum-divine ordering.
- term: emergence in the physicalist sense
  why: The gross object is not a novel property emerging from a physical base; it is a new whole (avayavin) that inheres in its parts by samavāya and really exists as one substance over them. Vaiśeṣika's part-whole realism is the opposite of reductive emergentism.
related:
- /concepts/paramanu.md
- /concepts/dravya.md
- /concepts/samavaya.md
- /concepts/ishvara.md
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Dvyaṇuka / Tryaṇuka -- द्व्यणुक / त्र्यणुक

**Not:** molecular chemistry, bonding forces, physicalist emergence

## What It Actually Means

Dvyaṇuka (dyad) and tryaṇuka (triad) name the steps by which Vaiśeṣika builds a perceptible world out of imperceptible atoms. Two eternal atoms combine into a dyad; the dyad is still too subtle to be perceived. Three dyads combine into a triad (tryaṇuka, sometimes trasareṇu), and the triad is the smallest perceptible magnitude, the mote seen in a sunbeam being the stock example. From triads upward, ordinary gross bodies are composed. The scheme solves a specific metaphysical problem: since atoms are partless and sizeless, how does anything with size and visibility ever arise? The answer is a graded composition in which each composite is a genuine new whole (avayavin) inhering in its parts via samavāya, with the process set in motion, at the dawn of each world-cycle, by unseen moral desert (adṛṣṭa) under the ordering will of Īśvara. It is thus a metaphysics of magnitude and part-whole reality, not a physics of molecular bonding, and it presupposes the realist categories rather than a force-and-particle picture.

## Audience Metaphor

It answers a riddle: if the ultimate bricks are literally sizeless, where does size come from? Vaiśeṣika's reply is a strict recipe, two atoms to a dyad, three dyads to the first speck you can actually see, that dust-mote in the sunbeam. It reads like chemistry but it is really an argument about how the visible arises from the invisible, held together not by chemical bonds but by inherence and, at the cosmic start, by a moral-and-divine ordering.

## Citations

1. Praśastapāda, Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (dvyaṇuka and tryaṇuka composition) -- see [references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md](../references/padarthadharmasamgraha.md)
2. Vaiśeṣika Sūtra, the atomist and part-whole sūtras -- see [references/vaisheshika-sutra.md](../references/vaisheshika-sutra.md)
3. Cross-category: paramanu.md and samavaya.md (this bundle)
