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XXIX On the Falsity of the World
227 able claim to validity. It is well known that perception through one sense, say the visual, has often to be woven together with perception through other senses, e.g., the tactile, for arriving at valid experience of facts, as in the perception "fire is hot.” Thus perceptual evidence has no right of superior validity by reason of being perceptible, though it may be admitted that in certain spheres perception may dispel an ignorance which is not removeu L; inferencel. The objection that an inferential evidence, because it establishes itself slowly (on account of its dependence on many facts), is of inferior validity to perception because this comes quicker is invalid; for validity depends upon proper examination and discovery of faultlessness and not on mere quickness. Moreover, since there are many scriptural texts declaring the oneness of all, which cannot be justified except on the assumption of the falsity of the world, and since such an admission would not take away from perception its natural claim to validity in the relative sphere, a compromise may well be effected by allowing perceptual validity to remain uncontrolled in the relative sphere and admitting the scriptural validity of oneness in the absolute sphere.
Again, Vyāsa-tirtha urges that, since inference and scriptural testimony both depend on visual and auditory perception, it will be wrong to think that the former could invalidate the latter. If perception is not valid in itself, then all inference and scriptural testimony would be invalid, since their data are supplied by perception.
To this Madhusūdana's reply is that the scriptural testimony does not challenge the data supplied by perception, but challenges their ultimate validity, which can never be supplied by perceptual experience? The bare fact that one knowledge springs up because it was preceded by another is no reason why it is to be less valid; the judgement "this is not silver, but conch-shell" is not less valid because it could not have come into being unless there had been a previous error with the perception of conch-shell as silver. It is said that the validity of sense-evidence is determined by a critical examination depending on correspondence. To this Madhusūdana's
ināpi anumānādy-anivartita-dinmohanādi-nivartakatvena prūbalyam; etāvatā hi vaidharmya-mātram siddham. Advaita-siddhi, P-355.
2 y'at-svarūpam upayujyate tanna badhyate, bădhyate ca tātvikatvākārah, sa ca nopasīvyate kāraṇatte tasyapraveśāt. Ibid. p. 363.
