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CHAPTER 1
of the same. Atoms etc. are established not by sight of the eye. Again, objects might be far off from us and accordingly beyond sense perception. Mountains or oceans far away are mentioned by Vasunandi as illustrations of this. Further, a thing might be hidden by some covering and for this reason it might be beyond the direct perception of our senses. But still, these are capable of being known by persons.
It cannot be urged that a person within a room covered from our sight by walls, is non-existent. It cannot be said that the moon and the stars are nonexistent during the daytime because we do not see these. It is ludicrous to mention that persons living in the past whom we do not now see were non-existent. We cannot say that things in distant countries do not exist. We can know from books or reliable persons the existence of persons or things in the past or in distant countries.
Again, in inference, we establish the existence of fire by seeing smoke from distance. Here, though fire is not the object of our direct perception, there is no doubt about its existence.
As things can thus be known without direct perception, it is not absurd that an omniscient should be able to have perception of all things existing at all times. Kundakundāchārya says, “For him who is evolving into knowledge the modifications of all substances are perceptible; he does not know them by means of effects such as avagraha."
Amộtachandra Sūri explains this as follows: “Since the perfect sage does not obtain knowledge by the aid of the senses, through the precedent series of Avagraha (the taking of the object of knowledge by the senses), īhā (the readiness to know more of the things perceived) and Avāya (finding out the perfection or otherwise of a thing), and since he himself, at the moment of the annihilation of all obscurations (āvaraņas), accepted the 1. Pravachana-sāra, Śruta-skandha, L.21, Cambridge University Press,
p. 13.
