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xx] Dialectical criticism against the Sankara School 315 is that the perceived entity is false. To this the reply is that the falsity of the relation does not prove the falsity of the relata; the relation between a hare and a horn may be non-existent, but that will not indicate that both the hare and the horn are themselves non-existent. Following that argument, the perceiver might just as well be declared as false. If, however, it is contended that the perceiver, being self-luminous, is self-evident and cannot therefore be supposed to be false, the reply is, that even if, in the absence of the act of perceiving, the perceiver may be regarded as selfrevealing, what harm is there in admitting the perceived to have the same status even when the perceiver is denied? If, however, it is said that the cognition of objects cannot be admitted to be selfestablished in the same way as the objects themselves, it may be asked if consciousness is ever perceived to be self-revealed. If it is said that the self-revealing character of consciousness can be established by inference, then by a counter-contention it may be held that the self-revealing character of the universe can also be proved by a suitable inference. It may again be questioned whether, if the Sankarite wishes to establish the self-revealing nature of Brahman by inference, its objectivity can be denied, and thus the original thesis that Brahman cannot be the object of any process of cognition must necessarily fail.
The Sankarite may indeed contend that the followers of Rāmānuja also admit that the objects are revealed by the cognition of the self and hence they are dependent on the perceiver. The reply to such a contention is that the followers of Rāmānuja admit the existence of self-consciousness by which the perceiver himself is regarded as cognized. If this self-consciousness is regarded as false, then the self-luminous self would also be false; and if this selfconsciousness be admitted as real, then the relation between them is real. If the self-revealing consciousness be regarded as impossible of perception and yet real, then on the same analogy the world may as well be regarded as real though unperceived.
The objection that the known is regarded as false, since it is difficult logically to conceive the nature of the relation subsisting between the knower and the known, is untenable, for merely on account of the difficulty of conceiving the logical nature of the relation one cannot deny the reality of the related entity which is incontestably given in experience. Therefore the relation has some
