Jaina View of Life

SR No.: 001622
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 260
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Discourse
File Size: 14 MB

Page 100

Critique of Knowledge
85
sense organs and is immediate may be called extra-sensory perception. It is also pratyakşa, because it is immediate and direct. It is of three types avadhi, manaḥ-paryāya and kevalapratyakşa. The old Jaina thinkers thought that knowledge born with the help of the five senses as well as the manas may be called matijñāna. But in indriya-pratyakşa they included knowledge born of the five sense organs, as the mind is not for them exactly a sense organ. It is a quasi-sense organ, Umāsvāti defines matijñāna as knowledge caused by the senses and mind, since mind is a quasi-sense, no-indriya.58 The commentator Siddhasenaganin mentions three types of mati : (i) knowledge born of the sense organs, (ii) knowledge born of the mind, and (iii) knowledge due to the joint activity of the sense organs and mind.59 However, from the Bhāşya of the Tattvärthasūtra we find that Matijñana can be distinguished into different types, as (i) knowledge due to sense organs, like sense perception; (ii) knowledge due to the mind only, like cinta; (iii) knowledge due to the joint activity of the mind and the senses. Memory and recognition can be included in Matijñāna. Sense perception (indriya-pratyakşa), as a species of Matijñāna is of five types based on the nature and function of the five sense organs. The five senses possess the capacity of sense experience because the cognition of the stimulation must be conditioned by the relevant instruments. The Jaina analysis of sense perception has a great psychological significance, although perception was a logical and metaphysical problem for the Jainas as for other Indian philosophers. In fact, even in the West, philosophers were first busy with the logical and the metaphysical analysis of the problein of perception, but with the advancement of psychology as a science may have realized that perception is more a problem for psychology. Bertrand Russell says that, the problem of perception has troubled philosophers from a very early date. My own belief
58. Tatt vārthasü tra, 1, 14. 59. Tattvārtha-Tikā, 1, 14. 60. Pramanamimāṁsā, 21 and commentary.