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 316

Philosophy in the Nyāya sūtras
299 senses, yet imagining, thinking, etc., could not be explained. Another argument for the admission of soul is this, that infants show signs of pleasure and pain in quite early stages of infancy and this could not be due to anything but similar experiences in previous lives. Moreover every creature is born with some desires, and no one is seen to be born without desires. All attachments and desires are due to previous experiences, and therefore it is argued that desires in infants are due to their experience in previous existences.
The body is made up of the kşiti element. The visual sense is material and so also are all other senses? Incidentally the view held by some that the skin is the only organ of sensation is also refuted. The earth possesses four qualities, water three, fire two, air one, and ether one, but the sense of smell, taste, eye, and touch which are made respectively by the four elements of earth, etc., can only grasp the distinctive features of the elements of which they are made. Thus though the organ of smell is made by earth which contains four qualities, it can only grasp the distinctive quality of earth, viz. smell.
Against the Sāmkhya distinction of buddhi (cognition) and cit (pure intelligence) it is said that there is no difference between the buddhi and cit. We do not find in our consciousness two elements of a phenomenal and a non-phenomenal consciousness, but only one, by whichever name it may be called. The Sāmkhya epistemology that the antahkarana assumes diverse forms in cognitive acts is also denied, and these are explained on the supposition of contacts of manas with the senses, ātman and external objects. The Buddhist objection against the Sāmkhya explanation that the antahkaranas catch reflection from the external world just as a crystal does from the coloured objects that may lie near it, that there were really momentary productions of crystals and no permanent crystal catching different reflections at different times is refuted by Nyāya; for it says that it cannot be said that all creations are momentary, but it can only be agreed to in those cases where momentariness was actually experienced. In the case of the transformation of milk into curd there is no coming in of new qualities and disappearance of old ones, but
i It is well to remember that Samkhya did not believe that the senses were constituted of the gross elements. But the Samkhya-Yoga view represented in Atreyasamhita (Caraka) regarded the senses as bhautika or constituted of the gross elements.