________________
xx] The Nature of Soul according to Venkațanātha 289 moment and due to his emphasizing a difference from a conditional point of view. Verkața holds that further arguments may also be brought forward by the Cārvākas?, to which effective replies may be given. But instead of going into a big chain of arguments and counter arguments the most effective way is to appeal to the testimony of scripture which in its self-validity affirms both positively and by implication the existence of the permanent self as distinct from the body. The testimony of the scriptures cannot be rebutted or refuted by mere speculative arguments.
There is a view that consciousness belongs to the senses and that cognitions through the different senses are integrated together in the same body, and it is by that means that an object perceived by the eye is also identified as the same entity as that grasped by the tactile apprehension. Another view is that the pleasurable, painful feelings associated with sense-cognitions can themselves attract or repulse an individual to behave as a separate entity who is being attracted or repelled by a sense-object. Verkața objects to such a doctrine as being incapable of explaining our psychological experience in which we feel that we have touched the very thing that we have seen. This implies that there is an entity that persists over and above the two different cognitions of the two senses; for the
1 The additional arguments of the Cārvākas are as follows:
When one says "I, a fat person, know," it is difficult to say that the fatness belongs to the body and the knowledge to some other entity. If the expression “my body" seems to imply that the body is different, the expression “I am fat" demonstrates the identity of the body and the self. What is definitely perceived cannot be refuted by inference, for in that case even fire could be inferred as cold. Perception is even stronger than scriptures and so there is no cause of doubt in our experience; therefore there is no reason to have recourse to any inference for testing the perceptual experience. The Sāmkhya argument, that those which are the results of aggregation must imply some other entity for which the aggregation has been named (just as a bedstead implies someone who is to lie on the bed), is ineffective; for the second-grade entity for which the first-grade conglomeration is supposed to be intended may itself await a third grade entity, and that another, and this may lead to a vicious infinite. To stop this vicious infinite the Samkhya thinks that the self does not await for any further entity. But instead of arbitrarily thinking the self to be ultimate, it is as good to stop at the body and to think that the body is its own end. The argument that a living body must have a soul because it has life is false, for the supposed self as distinct from the body is not known to us by other means. One might as well say that a living body must have a sky-lotus because it has life. The Cārvāka ultimately winds up the argument and says that the body is like an automatic machine which works by itself without awaiting the help of any other distinct entity presiding over it, and is the result of a specific modification of matter (ananyà-dhisthita-svayam-vähakayantra-nyāyād vicitra-bhūta-parisati-višeşa-sambhavo'yam deha-yantrah). Sarvartha-siddhi, p. 157.
DUI
19
