Alamban Pariksha

Author(s): Dinnaga, Dharmapala, N Aiyaswami Shastri
Publisher: Adyar Library

Page 96

ĀLAMBANAPARĪKSĀ
double moon ? [The author replies : If you stick to your view,] tell me : why does not the cognition arise of the double sound at a time immediately after the soundobject and its consciousness being present ? It is also impossible to assume that the mental consciousness arises successively in the case of a man who possesses the organ of the eye in a sound condition. Tell me, on what basis, are accomplished many and different things : the material objects, senses, their consciousness and their cognizable varieties (without intervention of the mental consciousness]? [So we must accept that there also arises simultaneously the mental consciousness by virtue of which we are able to congnize many and varied things.]
One who says that I perceive the single moon as double and accepts that there is the external object apart from consciousness, how will that man also explain the mistake in number causing the delusion of the double moon to arise ? [That is to say, he must also resort to the aid of mental consciousness to explain it satisfactorily.]
“As both atoms and their aggregates are defective in one or other respect, they are not real objects of consciousness."
The alambana consists in two parts, viz. representation of its own image and causality for its consciousness. The atom lacks in the first part, i.e. its įmage is not represented in consciousness, and the aggregate is devoid of the second part, i.e., causality. Thus these two defects as have been discussed, point