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154
Buddhist Philosophy
[CH.
to the sense pūrvadrstāparadystañcārthamekikurvadvijñānamasannihitavişayam parvadrstasyāsannihitatvāt). In all illusory perceptions it is the sense which is affected either by extraneous or by inherent physiological causes. If the senses are not perverted they are bound to present the object correctly. Perception thus means the correct presentation through the senses of an object in its own uniqueness as containing only those features which are its and its alone (svalaksanam). The validity of knowledge consists in the sameness that it has with the objects presented by it (arthena saha yatsārūpyam sādrśyamasya jñānasya tatpramāņamiha). But the objection here is that if our percept is only similar to the external object then this similarity is a thing which is different from the presentation, and thus perception becomes invalid. But the similarity is not different from the percept which appears as being similar to the object. It is by virtue of their sameness that we refer to the object by the percept (taditi sārūpyam tasya vaśāt) and our perception of the object becomes possible. It is because we have an awareness of blueness that we speak of having perceived a blue object. The relation, however, between the notion of similarity of the perception with the blue object and the indefinite awareness of blue in perception is not one causation but of a determinant and a determinate (vyavasthāpyavyavasthāpakabhävena). Thus it is the same cognition which in one form stands as signifying the similarity with the object of perception and is in another indefinite form the awareness as the percept (tata ekasya vastunah kiñcidrūpam pramānam kiñcitpramānaphalam na virudliyate). It is on account of this similarity with the object that a cognition can be a determinant of the definite awareness (vyavasthāpanaheturhi sārūpyam), so that by the determinate we know the determinant and thus by the similarity of the sense-datum with the object (pramana) we come to think that our awareness has this particular form as "blue" (pramānaphala). If this sameness between the knowledge and its object was not felt we could not have spoken of the object from the awareness (sārūpyamanubhūtam vyavasthāpanahetuh). The object generates an awareness similar to itself, and it is this correspondence that can lead us to the realization of the object so presented by right knowledge!
See also pp. 340 and 409. It is unfortunate that, excepting the Nyayabindu, Nyāyabinduļikā, Nyāyabindutikātippani (St Petersburg, 1909), no other works dealing with this interesting doctrine of perception are available to us. Nyāyabindu is probably
