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 358

VIII]
Transcendental Contact
341
present, this perception of identity should be regarded as an effect of it. But the Buddhists still emphasize the point that an object of past experience refers to a past time and place and is not experienced now and cannot therefore be identified with an object which is experienced at the present moment. It has to be admitted that Vācaspati's answer is not very satisfactory for it leads ultimately to the testimony of direct perception which was challenged by the Buddhists!. It is easy to see that early Nyāya-Vaiseșika could not dismiss the savikalpa perception as invalid for it was the same as the nirvikalpa and differed from it only in this, that a name was associated with the thing of perception at this stage. As it admits a gradual development of perception as the progressive effects of causal operations continued through the contacts of the mind with the self and the object under the influence of various intellectual (e.g. memory) and physical (e.g. light rays) concomitant causes, it does not, like Vedānta, require that right perception should only give knowledge which was not previously acquired. The variation as well as production of knowledge in the soul depends upon the variety of causal collocations.
Mind according to Nyāya is regarded as a separate sense and can come in contact with pleasure, pain, desire, antipathy and will. The later Nyāya writers speak of three other kinds of contact of a transcendental nature called sāmānyalaksana, jñānalaksana and yogaja (miraculous). The contact sāmānyalakșana is that by virtue of which by coming in contact with a particular we are transcendentally (alaukika) in contact with all the particulars (in a general way) of which the corresponding universal may be predicated. Thus when I see smoke and through it my sense is in contact with the universal associated with smoke my visual sense is in transcendental contact with all smoke in general. Jñānalakṣaṇa contact is that by virtue of which we can associate the perceptions of other senses when perceiving by any one sense. Thus when we are looking at a piece of sandal wood our visual sense is in touch with its colour only, but still we perceive it to be fragrant without any direct contact of the object with the organ of smell. The sort of transcendental contact (alaukika sannikarşa) by virtue of which this is rendered
i Tatparyațīkā, pp. 88-95.