Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

SR No.: 011115
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1939
Total Pages: 440
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 258

EXTRAORDINARY PERCEPTION
239
the fragrant sandalwood, seen at a distance? Its fragrance is not then smelt by him and so does not come in contact with the sense of smell. Nor can there be any ordinary contact between smell and the sense of sight. Still he perceives it as fragrant sandalwood lying at a distance. Hence we are to say that there is some extraordinary contact between fragrance and the sense of sight. Here our past experience of fragrance in the sandalwood does the work of contact between sense and object. Our past knowledge of fragrance (saurabhajñāna) brings about the present percep tion of it, although it is not actually smelt by us. It cannot be said that the present perception of fragrapre as a parti cular is brought about by sāmānyalaksana cognition of the class of fragrants. The latter cognition supposes ar ordinary percep:ion of the genus of fragrance through sense contact which is not to be found in the present case. Thus we see that in both sāmānyalaksana and jñanalaksana perceptions sense-object contact is mediated by some kind of knowledge. In the former, the knowledge of a universal and, in the latter, some past experience is the medium of contact between sense and the perceived objects. But the distinction between them is this While in sāmānyalaksana the knowledge of the universal leads to the perception of the individuals in which it inheres (āśraya), in jñānalaksana, a past knowledge leads to the present perception of its own object (yadvisayakam jñānas tasyaiva pratyāsattıḥ).?
The Naiyāyikas explain illusions by the help of the theory of jñānalaksana perception. The illusory silver is perceived because it is presented through our previous knowledge of silver as seen at some other time and place. But the Vedānta objects to the Nyāya theory of jñānalakṣaṇa. It argues that to recognise jñānalakṣaṇa as a type of genuine
1 SM., 65. 3 Ibid.