History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

Page 2153

XXXI] The Pramānas
337 busy with other objects and it ceases to be discovered. Memory can be strengthened by proper exercise, and things can be forgotten or wrongly remembered through diverse kinds of defects; in these cases also knowledge is not destroyed, but only remains hidden through the effect of māyā.
The knowledge that is associated with the pramānas is the sāttvika knowledge; the sattva is associated with pramā (or right knowledge), and when it disappears there is error. Pramā is defined as uncontradicted knowledge or knowledge that is not liable to contradiction?. The increase of the sattva by which knowledge is produced may be due to various causes, e.g., scriptures, objects, people, country, time, birth, karma, meditation, mantras, purifications, samskāras. The knowledge which is primarily predominant in sattva is the notion that one universal essence is present everywhere; this knowledge alone is absolutely valid. The knowledge which is associated with rajas is not absolutely valid; it is that which we find in all our ordinary or perceptual scientific knowledge, which is liable to errors and correction. This rajas knowledge at the time of its first manifestation is indeterminate in its nature, conveying to us only the being of things. At this stage, however, we have the first application of the senses to the objects which rouse the sattva quality, and there is no association with rajas; as such this indeterminable knowledge, though it forms the beginning of rajas knowledge, may be regarded as sāttvika. Later on, when the manas functions with the senses, we have the samkalpa knowledge, and regard it as rajas. The pure sensory knowledge or sensation is not regarded as inherent in the senses. The senseoperation in the first instance rouses the sattva, and therefore the knowledge produced by the application of the senses in the first instance does not convey with it any of the special qualities of the senses, visual, auditory and the like, but merely the being, which is not the specific quality of any sense, but only a revelation of the nature of sattva; such knowledge, though roused by the senses, does not belong to them. It is by the function of the vikalpa of the manas that this knowledge as pure being assumes distinct forms in association with sense-characteristics. The application of this function is too rapid to be easily apprehended by us, and for this Ia-bādhita-jñānatram bādha-yogya-vyatiriktatvam vā tal-lakṣaṇam.
Prasthānaratnākara, p. 6.