Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 006972
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 162
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 14 MB

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INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
word could not enable a man who has not learnt the convention to know the thing. 42 Someone might here insert a suggestion that convention being dependent upon and governed by the human will and human will being free, even the thing may become the denoter and the words the denoted. The Jaina logicians observe that just as an invariable relation between smoke and fire is natural, even so the relation between a word and a thing is natural. Convention merely makes us conscious of that relation in the same way as repeated observation makes us conscious of the invariable concomitance between smoke and fire.43 Granted that there obtains a natural relation between them, one might, here, raise a question as to whether words generate knowledge of certain things or of all things. If the first alternative is accepted, nothing other than those certain things would be cognised through words even if hundreds of conventions are formed. If the second alternative is accepted, then, through a single world all things would be cognised at a time and consequently our activity with respect to a definte object would become impossible because all words would be capable of generating knowledge of all things. The Jaina logicians reply that this difficulty would not arise because though every word is capable of being related to any object, yet it would denote that object only with which it is conventionally connected.44 Thus, words being connected with things enable us to know the thing. It might be objected that if the words were having yogyatā-sambandha with things, as the visual organ has with its object, then words would generate knowledge of external things without requiring any convention as the visual organ does. In answer, it is said that word is a jñāpaka-kārana (revealing cause) and hence it requires the assistance of convention while visual organ is a kāraka-kārana (generating cause) and hence it does not require any convention to generate the knowledge of its object. The visual organ, being the kāraka-kārana of the knowledge of its object, generates it even when the cogniser has not learnt that there obtains an invariable relation between the organ and the knowledge generated by it. But words, like smoke etc., being just jñāpaka-kāranas cause the knowledge of objects only when one has learnt that there obtains an invariable relation between the mark and the marked.45 The entire trend of the argument makes it clear that even the Jaina logicians, like the Nyāya logicians, are of the opinion that as soon as we bear the word, the knowledge of the thing is generated in us, and if the speaker is an authority, valid knowledge or the knowledge of things as they are is generated.