Indian Logic Part 03

SR No.: 006975
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala
Publication Year: 1997
Total Pages: 226
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 113

102
INDIAN LOGIC
very broad sense the view in question is of extensive application). However, while the Nyaya philosophers think that it is possible for an earthen body to remain in tact and yet get heated, their Vaiseşika colleagues maintain that before being heated an earthen body must break into atoms to be combined back in the old form after the heating process is over. The chief example considered in this connection is that of baking an earthen jar in the potter's kiln, it being the Vaiseṣika philosopher's point that since even the interiormost parts of this jar develop new sensory qualities and since this jar is often found to get deformed there must be a thoroughest breakup of this jar before it gets heated; Jayanta, endorsing the Nyaya position on the question, argues that fire-particles can enter into the interior-most parts of a raw jar just as water seeps out to the surface from within the interior of a baked jar while a jar being heated within a kiln can get deformed owing to an outside pressure." Jayanta's point is that there is nothing incredible about a living body becoming a different body every moment when according to the Vaiseṣika philosopher even a jar being baked within a kiln becomes, a different jar during the process. For otherwise he is rather arguing that a living body is unlike an ordinary physical body like a jar inasmuch as the former undergoes change from moment to moment while nothing of the sort happens to the latter." Nor is the significance of this argument to be minimised, for this is Jayanta's way of recognising that metabolism is a characteristic property of a living body. But paradoxically this highly important recognition is here being made with a view to denying the even more significant fact that consciousness too is a characteristic property of a living body. For Jayanta's argument is that consciousness is not a property of a living body because 'co-ordination' so central to all conscious activity is possible only on the part of something that remains the same all the time while a living body undergoes a change from moment to moment. Be that as it may, here in fact closes the Chapter (Ahnika) VII first section ostensibly devoted to demonstrating that a soul is not an object of perception. As can be seen, Jayanta has so developed his argument that he has been able. to offer what according to him are the most important reasons for positing a soul. In the second and the third sections of the chapter are respectively refuted the Buddhist's doctrine of no-soul and the Cārvāka's materialist doctrine, where the former refutation includes