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188 Philosophy of the Rāmānuja School of Thought [ch. ported! He further criticizes the anirvacanīya-khyāti (illusion as the indescribable creation of, say, the appearance of silver in the conch-shell-silver illusion), a view of illusion as held by the Sankarites, in the stereotyped form with which we are already familiar.
Anantācārya, a writer of the nineteenth century, laid stress on the view of illusion which held that all things were contained in all things, and hence the perception of conch-shell as silver was neither false knowledge nor non-apprehension of the difference between what is perceived and what is remembered; for the perception “this is silver" is a complex of two perceptions, “this” and "silver." Had not this been a case of actual perception, we should not have felt as if we perceived the “this” before us as “silver.” The function of doșa (defect) was only to hide the conch-shell part (mixed up with the silver part) from perception. To say that all perceptions have objective entities corresponding to them (yathārtha) does not mean that things are as they are perceived, but it means that it is not true that what is perceived has not an objective basis corresponding to it?. That sort of tejas-substance which forms the material cause of silver certainly exists in the elemental tejas,
forming the material cause of conch-shells being present in the elemental earth-substances, these substances get mixed in the primitive stage of compounding by triurt-karana, and this explains the presence of the objective substratum of silver in the illusory perception of silver3. It is evident, argues Anantācārya, that conch-shell cannot appear as silver; for, since conchshell is not silver, how can it appear as silver? In order properly to account for the perceptual experience this is silver," it is necessary to assume that the two constituents, “this” and “silver,” of the complex “this is silver" are both perceptually determined; for it is only in this way that one can justify the perception “I perceive this silver."
yady api bhūtānām pañcikarana-labdha-paraspara-vyāptyā suktikāyām api sādrśyāt rajatai-kadešo vidyata eta iti siddhāntah tathāpi na vidyata iti krtvā cintyate vădy-udāharana-prasiddhy-anurodhāya. Govt. Oriental MSS. No. 4910.
2 tad-visayaka-jñāna-samanyam visesyāurtti-dharma-prakārakatva-bhāvavad iti vathartham surra-tijñānam. Jrāna-yāthārthya-vāda, MSS. No. 4884.
3 yadrsa-dharmā-vacchinnāt tejo'mśād rajatā-rambhaḥ tādrsa-dharmavacchinnānām apy amśānām mahā-bhūtātmake tejasi sattvena śukty-arambhakatāt'acchedaka-dharmā-vacchinnānām pārthiva-bhāgānām api mahā-prthivyām sattvena tayoh mahā-bhūta-triuyt-karana-daśāyām eva melanā-sambhavācchuktyadau rajata-sad-bhāvo-papatteh. Ibid.
This is an answer to the already noted objection raised by the Sruta-prakāśikā.
