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XXV]
Important Madhva Works
67
as such cannot be negated1. He further says that, if everything in the world were false, then the allegation that the world would be contradicted in experience would also be false. If the contradiction of the world be false, then virtually it amounts to saying that the world-experience is never contradicted. If it is said that the worldappearance is different from being and if the predicate "being" means the class-concept of being, then it is a virtual admission of a plurality of existents, without which the class-concept of being is impossible. If however the predicate "being" means pure being, then, since such a pure "being" is only Brahman, its difference from the world would be an intelligible proposition, and it would not prove the so-called anirvacaniya. It is said that falsity is that which is different from both being and non-being, and that would virtually amount to saying that that which is not different is alone true2. On such a supposition the plurality of causes or of effects or the diversities of grounds in inferences must all be discarded as false, and knowledge would be false. Knowledge implies diversity; for the knower, the knowledge and the object of knowledge cannot be the same. Again, it is wrong to hold that ignorance rests in the object of knowledge or the Brahman; for the ignorance always belongs to the knowledge. If on the occasion of knowledge it is held that the ignorance belonging to the objects is removed, then, the ignorance being removed in the object by one person's knowledge of it, all persons should be able to know the object. If any knowing of the jug means that the ignorance resting in the jug is removed, then, the ignorance being removed, the jug should be known even by persons who are not present here3. Again, if by the knowledge of any object the ignorance resting in another object be removed, then by the knowledge of the jug the ignorance in other objects could be removed.
Again, a material object is that which never can be a knower.
na ca badhyam jagad ity atra kiñcin mānam.
Tattvoddyota, p. 242.
2 sad-vilakṣaṇatvam a-sad-vilakṣaṇatvam ca mithya ity a-vilakṣaṇam eva satyam syat. Ibid. p. 242(a).
3
1
nahi jñāna-jñeyayor ekākārata nahi ajñasya ghaṭāśrayatvam brahmaāśrayatvam vā asti; pumgatam eva hi tamojñānena nivartate; viṣayāśrayamced ajñanam nivartate tarhi ekena jñatasya ghatasya anyair ajñātatvam na syat. Ibid. p. 242.
5-2
