Jaina Concept of Omniscience

SR No.: 001547
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ramjee Singh
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1974
Total Pages: 258
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Knowledge
File Size: 17 MB

Page 159

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KNOWLEDGE OF KNOWLEDGE
uñicompromising non-self revelatorists they maintain that knowledge can be known only non-perceptually. Even the Prābhākaras maintain that knowledge is inferred from effect-in-the-form of cognition (phala-samvitti) but this is different from the Bhāțjas theory of cognition as inferred from the effect-in-the-form of manifestedness (prākatya-rūpa-phala).28 The Nyāya-Vaiseșika also holds that knowledge does not reveal itself, just as the finger-tip cannot touch itself. Knowledge is, no doubt, by nature perceptible but not self-perceptible.30 But it is clear that this View, as has been pointed out by many critics, leads to the fallacy of infinite-regress because then every cognition will require another one to be cognised. But if the Naiyāyika says that the manifesting cognition does not require to be cognised by another cognition, one may retort by saying that if it is cognised by itself, then the self-revelatory nature of the same cognition is ipso facto established. Further, the hypothesis of the unknownness of tne revealing cognition will also not do, for it is absurd to say that an unknown knowledge can know another piece of knowledge. Then, if we regard knowledge as imperceptible, our own states of pleasure and pain should not worry us. Instead, we should be able to feel happiness or sorrow at the pleasure and suffering of others. But it is obvious that we cannot have the experience of others. The famous Jaina logician Prabhācandra27 has made a detailed criticism of the Nyāya-Vaišeşika position that a cognition cannot turn on itself to make itself its object. He says that as pleasure, pain and our religious experiences are self-cognised, so every cognition must be self-revelatory. Further there is no proof of a cognition cognising another. If one cognition is perceived by another, the other will never be able to cognise the first since the past is dead and gone and after-recognition is not a fact.
25 Śālikānātha, Prakarana-Pañcika, p. 63. (For comparative account of
the views of the Prābhākaras and the Bhāțțas on this problem). 26 Visvanātha, Karikavali, (Bombay, Nirņayasāgara), 57. 27 Prabhācandra, Prameya-kamala-märtanda, pp. 132-148.