प्रसङ्गः — The Recurring Matter: Consistency across a Text

Prasaṅga is the device of the recurring matter: a statement that belongs to more than one topic and appears in more than one place. Kauṭilya defines it as "a matter common to another topic", with a phrase that serves two sections of his work: "'on land assigned for agriculture' — this is common with the preceding." Suśruta defines it as "completion through another topic", or the matter, stated more than once in separate topics, that is completed by its recurrence, and his example can be traced in the Saṃhitā: the definition of the person as "the combination of the five great elements and the embodied self", given in the first chapter of the Sūtrasthāna, is cited again in the first chapter of the Śārīrasthāna, where it is completed by the words "this is the person of action, with whom therapeutics is concerned." Cakrapāṇi defines it as "restatement of a matter stated before, because it arises in the context and so on", with the excessive use of the senses, described in the Sūtrasthāna and described again in the Śārīrasthāna. Caraka himself counts repetition (punarukta) as a fault of speech and praises a śāstra "free from the fault of repetition". This article shows how prasaṅga differs from that fault, traces Suśruta's example in the text, and answers three objections: that prasaṅga is repetition, that it is the same as atideśa, and that Kauṭilya's definition differs from the physicians'. It concludes that prasaṅga is the device of consistency across a long text, and that its modern forms are the recapitulated definition, the cross-cutting theme and the incidental finding. Series: तन्त्रयुक्तिविमर्शः · Tantrayukti Studies, TY-2026/16. Loci: AŚ 15.1.34–35; Su. Utt. 65.22. Online version: https://sanskritmanthan.in/a/ty-16-prasanga