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Eli Franco
Purandara's answer consists in complying with this kind of argument without giving up the basic Lokāyata positions. Thus inference was accepted as far as it did not, or better, could not, contradict the Lokāyata positions, but as soon it was to be applied to prove the existence of Soul, God and other non-perceptible objects, which could endanger, if not annihilate, all the Lokāyatikas were fighting for-and I think it was ultimately to found social and political institutions independently of religious dogma-it was to be rejected as a non-valid means of knowledge.
In order to do this Purandara had to admit inference, but only up to a point, which is a rather difficult task, for once inference is accepted, there is no apparent reason why one should use it only as long as it suits the Lokāyata. Thus, the task which presented itself to Purandara was to find a reason why inference should never overlap perception. And his answer probably was : because it depends upon perception.
I argued above that Prabhācandra's interpretations of the sūtra are to be prefered to those of Vadi Deva and the others, because they make more sense. Now, suppose I am right in my premises, and that the sūtra does make better sense that way, does it follow that this was the original intention of the sūtra ?
Let me argue briefly in favour of the opposite view. The sūtra is mentioned and explained several times, and the majority of the sources interpret it in the same manner. Should we not accept the interpretation favoured by the majority ?
Moreover, Jayanta and Bhāsarvajña are roughly two centuries earlier than Parbhācandra (active c. A.D. 1025-1060), which means they are closer to Purandara's own time, and had, therefore, a better chance of first hand acquaintance with his work.
Further, Jayanta and the others give one sole interpretation of the sūtra, whereas Prabhācandra brings up two vikalpas in the PKM and no less than nine in the NKC. From this fact we can conclude that they were sure about the sūtra's meaning, whereas Prabhācandra was not quite certain about it.
Considering all this, we could make the following assumption : Bhāsarvajña and Jayanta were well acquainted with Purandara's thought, whereas Prabhācandra had only a fragmentary knowledge of it, and interpreted a nonsensical argument in an intelligent manner, but one which does not convey the original purport of the argument.
Such a view, however, no matter how well formulated, is self-defeating. There can be no reason why we should accept an illogical, confused interpretation rather than a logical one, for this would involve a contradiction in our presupposition. If we do not want to make our authors talk good sense, we have no business to comment upon them. Besides, any such reasoning can be cancelled by selfreference.
All this does not mean, of course, that what we take to be a nonsensical argument is in fact nonsensical, for we may have misunderstood it. But as long as our
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