Vaisheshika (IAST: Vaiśeṣika; Sanskrit: वैशेषिक) is one of the six classical schools (darshanas) of Hindu philosophy from ancient India. In its early phase, it was an independent system possessing its own metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics and soteriology. The tradition is attributed to the sage Kaṇāda Kashyapa, with its foundational ideas placed broadly between the 6th and 2nd centuries BCE.
Over time, Vaiśeṣika came to share many philosophical procedures, ethical conclusions and soteriological aims with the Nyāya school, while retaining its distinctive positions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, Vaiśeṣika accepted only two reliable means of knowledge (pramāṇas): direct observation (perception) and inference. In this respect it resembled Buddhist epistemology, though both traditions also regarded their respective scriptures as valid; for Vaiśeṣikas the authoritative scriptures were the Vedas.
The school is particularly known for its naturalism and for an early form of atomism in natural philosophy. It held that all objects in the physical universe are ultimately reducible to paramāṇu (atoms), and that human experience arises from the interplay of categories such as substance (which is a function of atoms, their number and their spatial arrangements), quality, activity, commonness, particularity and inherence. Aggregates of atoms were said to give rise to qualities, with their aggregation and nature being shaped by cosmic forces. Comparable atomistic notions also appeared in the Ājīvika and Trairāśika schools associated with Jain thought; however, those formulations were similar to each other but considered less developed than the Vaiśeṣika account.
In its soteriology, Vaiśeṣika taught that knowledge and liberation are attainable through a complete understanding of the world of experience, that is, by correctly grasping the categories of reality and the nature of their constituents. This emphasis on systematic analysis of the world, combined with logical method, situates Vaiśeṣika among the analytical and realist traditions within Hindu philosophy, complementary to Ny