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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
variety of mental impressions, without any reference to external things, and remark that on your doctrine the existence of mental inpressions is impossible, as . you do not admit the perception of external things. For the variety of mental impressions is caused altogether by the variety of the things perceived. How, indeed, could various impressions originate if no external things were perceived? The hypothesis of a beginningless series of mental impressions would lead only to a baseless regressus ad infinitum, sublative of the entire phenomenal world, and would in no way establish your position.—The same argument, i.e. the one founded on the impossibility of mental impressions which are not caused by external things, refutes also the positive and negative judgments, on the ground of which the denier of an external world above attempted to show that ideas are caused by mental impressions, not by external things. We rather have on our side a positive and a negative judgment whereby to establish our doctrine of the existence of external things, viz. 'the perception of external things is admitted to take place also without mental impressions,' and 'mental impressions are not admitted to originate independently of the perception of external things.'-Moreover, an impression is a kind of modification, and modifications cannot, as experience teaches, take place unless there is some substratum which is modified. But, according to your doctrine, such a substratum of impressions does not exist, since you say that it cannot be cognised through any means of knowledge.
31. And on account of the momentariness (of the âlayavigñâna, it cannot be the abode of mental impressions).
If you maintain that the so-called internal cognition (âlayavigñana ') assumed by you may constitute the abode
1 The vigñanaskandha comprises vigīânas of two different kinds, the âlayavigñâna and the pravrittivigñâna. The alayavigñâna comprises the series of cognitions or ideas which refer to the ego; the pravrittivigñâna comprises those ideas which refer to apparently external objects, such as colour and the like. The ideas of the
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