philosophy, and a school whose special
concern was the elucidation of physics
and metaphysics. The Vaisheshika
analysis of the categories for the
universe was later combined with the
stress on reasoning in another of the six
schools, the Nyayas, to form the Nyaya-
Vaisheshika school, sometimes called
the Naiyayikas. The Vaisheshika school
was atomistic—that is, it espoused the
belief that all things were made up of a
few basic constituent things—and this
atomism was the root of the school’s
metaphysics. Philosophically speaking,
the Vaisheshikas were realists—that is,
they thought that the world was made
up of many different things and that
these things actually existed as per-
ceived, except in cases of perceptual
error. They believed that all things were
composed of nine fundamental sub-
stances—the five elements, space, time,Vaisheshika
One of the many forms of Vishnu. Vishnu’s followers are known as Vaishnavas.