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Controversy between Dualists and Monists
[CH.
only generically. Thus, when one says "I have no knowledge," if knowledge here has only a generic reference, the proposition is absurd, since the knowledge of not having knowledge is itself a knowledge, and in the proposition the negation of knowledge, having a general reference, contradicts the very supposition of not having knowledge.
It may be urged that, if the above criticisms against the knowledge of negation be valid, then the same would apply to negationprecedent also. To this Madhusudana's reply is that there is no necessity to admit "negation-precedent"; for the real meaning of the so-called negation-precedent is future production, which, again, means nothing more than that time-entity which is not qualified by any object or its destruction-such object being that which is supposed to be the defining reference of the so-called negation-precedent. This is also the meaning of futurity1. It must be noted in this connection that production must be defined as a specific relation which stands by itself; for it cannot be defined in terms of negation-precedent, since the negation-precedent can be defined only in terms of production, and thus, if negation-precedent is made a constituent of the definition of production, this entails a vicious circle. So, even if negation-precedent be admitted, it would be difficult to show how it could be intuited; and, on the other hand, one loses nothing by not admitting negation-precedent as a separate category. The negation involved in a negation-precedent is equivalent, so far as merely the negation is concerned, to the absence of the negated object at a particular point of time, which, again, has for its content a specific negation limited by a particular time, where the specific object appears only in a generic relation. An analysis of this shows that in negation-precedent (prāg-abhāva) there is negation of a specific object as limited by the present, yet that specific object does not appear in its character as specific and particular, but only in a generic manner2. The dilemma here is that negation of a specific object (višeṣābhāva) cannot have for the content of its defining reference merely the generic character of the thing negated, without involving any of its particularities; and, if
1 bhavisyatvam ca pratiyogi-tad-dhvamsānādhāra-kāla-sambandhitvam. Advaita-siddhi, p. 552.
2 ihedānim ghato nāstīti pratītis tu sāmānya-dharmāvacchinna-pratiyogitākatat-kälävacchinna-yavad-viseṣābhāva-viṣayā. Ibid. p. 553.
