Rethinking Existence, Cause, and Effect: Mullā Ṣadrā’s Īqāẓ al-nā’imīn in Dialogue with Gadādhara’s Kāraṇatāvāda

In this paper, I revisit two key passages from Mullā Ṣadrā’s (d. 1635) Īqāẓ al-nā’imīn through the lens of Gadādhara’s (d. ca 1660) remarks on causation in his Kāraṇatāvāda. Mullā Ṣadrā maintains that the Divine is “creator” only within a specific mode of being, adding that God and creation share the same existence at the level of manifestation. At first glance, this seems to conflict with Gadādhara’s emphasis on a firm distinction between cause and effect. I argue that there is no real contradiction, because Mullā Ṣadrā’s claim of shared existence highlights the effect’s total dependence on the cause rather than denying its distinct identity. Finally, I turn to eighteenth-century India and the writings of Kundan Lāl Ashkī to show how Hindu thinkers historically compared Avicennan and Naiyāyika perspectives on causation, demonstrating the implications of such comparisons for understanding intellectual history in South Asia.