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xx] Verkațanātha's treatment of Pramāņa 203 case of testimony it is the faultlessness of the speaker that constitutes the validity of the knowledge. The scriptures are valid because they have been uttered by God, Who has the right knowledge of things. The validity of the Vedas is not guaranteed by absence of defect in our instruments of knowledge. Whatever that may be, the ultimate determination of pramāņa is through pramā, or right knowledge. That by which one can have right knowledge is pramāņa. Vedas are valid, because they are uttered by God, Who has right knowledge. So it is the rightness of knowledge that ultimately determines the validity of pramāṇal
Vātsya Śrīnivāsa, a successor of Venkatanātha of the Rāmānuja school, defines pramāņa as the most efficient instrument amongst a collocation of causes forming the immediate, invariable and unconditional antecedents of any right knowledge (pramā). Thus, in the case of perception, for example, the visual organ is a pramāņa which leads to right visual knowledge, through its intermediary active operation (avāntara-vyāpāra)—the sense-contact of the eye with its objects? Jayanta, the celebrated Nyāya writer, had, however, expressed a different view on the point in his Nyāya-mañjari. He held that no member in a collocation of causes producing the effect could be considered to be more efficient or important than the other members. The efficiency (atiśaya) of the causal instruments means their power of producing the effect, and that power belongs to all the members jointly in the collocation of causes; so it is the entire collocation of causes producing right knowledge that is to be admitted as its instrument or pramāņa3. Even subject and object cannot be regarded as more important; for they manifest themselves only through the collocating causes producing the desired relation between the subject and the object 4. With Nyāya this
1 karana-prāmānyasya āśraya-prāmānyasya ca jñāna-prāmānyā-dhina-jñānatvāt tad ubhaya-prāmānya-siddhy-artham api jñāna-prāmānyam eva vicāranīyam. Nyāya-sāra, p. 35.
? pramā-karanam pramānam ity uktam ācāryaih siddhānta-sāre pramotpādaka-sāmagri-madhye yad atiśayena pramā-gunakam tat tasyāḥ kāranam; atiśayaś ca vyāpāraḥ, yad dhi yad janayitvaiva yad janayet tat tatra tasyāvāntaravyāpārah. sākşātkāri-pramāyā indriyam kāranam indriyā-rtha-samyogo 'rāntaravyāpārah. Rāmănuja, Siddhānta-samgraha. Govt. Oriental MS. No. 4988.
sa ca sāmagry-antar-gatasya na kasyacid ekasya kārakasya kathayitum puryate, sāmagryās tu so'tiśayah suvacaḥ sannihitā cet sāmagri sampannam eva phalam iti. Nyāya-mañjari, p. 13.
* sākalya-prasāda-lahdha-pramiti-sambandha-nibandhanaḥ pramāty-prameyayor mukhya-svarūpa-lābhaḥ. Ibid. p. 14.
