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 407

390
Mīmāmsā Philosophy
[ch.
relation between two concrete things, as in the case of smoke and fire, has been noticed. The latter is that kind of inference where the permanent relation is observed not between two concrete things but between two general notions, as in the case of movement and change of place, e.g. the perceived cases where there is change of place there is also motion involved with it; so from the change of place of the sun its motion is inferred and it is held that this general notion is directly perceived like all universals?.
Prabhākara recognizes the need of forming the notion of the permanent relation, but he does not lay any stress on the fact that this permanent relation between two things (fire and smoke) is taken in connection with a third thing in which they both subsist. He says that the notion of the permanent relation between two things is the main point, whereas in all other associations of time and place the things in which these two subsist together are taken only as adjuncts to qualify the two things (e.g. fire and smoke). It is also necessary to recognize the fact that though the concomitance of smoke in fire is only conditional, the concomitance of the fire in smoke is unconditional and absolute. When such a conviction is firmly rooted in the mind that the concept of the presence of smoke involves the concept of the presence of fire, the inference of fire is made as soon as any smoke is seen. Prabhākara counts separately the fallacies of the minor (pakşābhāsa), of the enunciation (pratijñābhāsa) and of the example (drstāntābhāsa) along with the fallacies of the middle and this seems to indicate that the Mīmāmsā logic was not altogether free from Buddhist influence. The cognition of smoke includes within itself the cognition of fire also, and thus there would be nothing left unknown to be cognized by the inferential cognition. But this objection has little force with Prabhākara, for he does not admit that a pramāna should necessarily bring us any new knowledge, for pramāna is simply defined as “apprehension." So though the inferential cognition always pertains to things already known it is yet regarded by him as a pramāna, since it is in any case no doubt an apprehension.
1 See ślokavārttika, Nyāyaratnākara, śāstradīpika, Yuktisnehapūraṇī, Siddhantacandrika on anumana.
2 On the subject of the means of assuring oneself that there is no condition (upādhi) which may vitiate the inference, Prabhākara has nothing new to tell us. He says that where even after careful enquiry in a large number of cases the condition cannot be discovered we must say that it does not exist (prayatnenānvisyamâne aupādhikatvā. navagamul, see Prakaranapasciki, p. 71).