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XXIX On the Falsity of the World
223 the parts contradicted by perceptual experience, but it is opposed to reason also; for, since the whole cannot be subsistent anywhere else, if it is not admitted to be subsistent in the parts, its very nature is inexplicable (anyāsamavetasyāmšitvam etat-tantu-samavetatvam vina na yuktam)".
Again, the view that, since without knowledge nothing is revealed, the so-called things are nothing but knowledge, is wrong; for the things are experienced not as being themselves knowledge, but as those things of which we have knowledge (ghațasya jñānam iti hi dhiḥ na tu ghato jñānam iti).
In reply to the above Madhusūdana says that, since the experience of cause and effect cannot be explained without assuming some difference between them, such a difference must be admitted for practical purposes, in spite of the fact that they are identical. Discussion regarding the validity or invalidity of negation is brushed aside by Madhusūdana as being out of place. Again, the opposition of perception is no objection; for perception is often illusory. Also, the objection that, if the whole, which is not elsewhere, is also not in the parts, its existence is inexplicable, is invalid; for, though the whole may not exist in the parts as an independent entity, it may still be there as identical with the material cause, the parts; for being materially identical (etat-samavetatva) with anything does not necessarily follow from a denial of its negation therein; for, if it were so, then all such qualities as are devoid of negative instances (being on that account present in it would be materially identical with the thing? But what really determines a thing's material identity with another thing is that the former's negation-prior-to-existence (prāg-abhāva) must be in it (kintu etan-niştha-prāg-abhāva-pratiyogitvād aikyam). The objection of Vyāsa-tirtha, that a cloth can have its negation in threads only when such threads are not its constituent parts, is invalid, for the very reason that what determines material identity is the existence of the prior-to-existence negation (prāg-abhāva-pratiyogitva) of the whole in the part or of the effect in the cause, and therefore it is not proper to say that a cloth can non-exist only in such threads as are not
i tathā ca amsitua-rupa-hetor etat-tantu-nisthātyantābhāva-pratiyogitvarūpa-sadhyena virodhaḥ. Nyāyāmặta-prakāśa, p. 86.
? etannisthātyantābhāva-pratiyogitvam hi etatsamavetatve prayojakam na bhavati, paramate kevalānvayi-dharma-mātrasya etatsamavetatvāpatteh.
Advaita-siddhi, p. 324.
