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

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The Sankara School of Vedanta
[CH.
though grammatically there are two ideas and a copula, yet from the point of view of intrinsic significance (tatparya) one identical reality only is indicated. Vedānta does not distinguish nirvikalpa and savikalpa in visual perception, but only in sabda perception as in cases referred to above. In all such cases the condition for nirvikalpa is that the notion conveyed by the sentence should be one whole or one identical reality, whereas in savikalpa perception we have a combination of different ideas as in the sentence, "the king's man is coming" (rajapuruşa agacchati). Here no identical reality is signified, but what is signified is the combination of two or three different concepts'.
It is not out of place to mention in this connection that Vedanta admits all the six pramāņas of Kumārila and considers like Mīmāmsā that all knowledge is self-valid (svataḥpramāna). But prama has not the same meaning in Vedānta as in Mīmāmsā. There as we remember prama meant the knowledge which goaded one to practical action and as such all knowledge was pramā, until practical experience showed the course of action in accordance with which it was found to be contradicted. In Vedanta however there is no reference to action, but prama means only uncontradicted cognition. To the definition of self-validity as given by Mimāmsā Vedānta adds another objective qualification, that such knowledge can have svataḥprāmāṇya as is not vitiated by the presence of any dosa (cause of error, such as defect of senses or the like). Vedanta of course does not think like Nyaya that positive conditions (e.g. correspondence, etc.) are necessary for the validity of knowledge, nor does it divest knowledge of all qualifications like the Mīmāmsists, for whom all knowledge is self-valid as such. It adopts a middle course and holds that absence of doșa is a necessary condition for the self-validity of knowledge. It is clear that this is a compromise, for whenever an external condition has to be admitted, the knowledge cannot be regarded as self-valid, but Vedanta says that as it requires only a negative condition for the absence of dosa, the objection does not apply to it, and it holds that if it depended on the presence of any positive condition for proving the validity of knowledge like the Nyaya, then only its theory of self-validity would have been damaged. But since it wants only a negative condition, no blame can be 1 See Vedantaparibhāṣā and Sikhāmani.