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278 Controversy between Dualists and Nonists [CH. less. So it is possible to have such counter-arguments as that beginninglessness can never be associated with veils, since it exists only as beginningless, like the negation-precedent; or that a valid knowledge can never remove anything else than negation, because it is knowledge. The manifestation of the unmanifested does not imply any positive fact of unmanifestation, but may signify only an absence of manifestation. Moreover, the light manifests the jug, etc., by removing darkness, because light is opposed to darkness, but the manifestation of knowledge cannot be opposed to ajñāna; for pure consciousness underlying the objects is not opposed to ajñāna. The opposition of vrtti to ajñāna is irrelevant; for ortti is not knowledge. What may be said concerning the rise of a new cognition is that it removes the beginningless negation of the knowledge of an object of any particular person.
Madhusūdana in reply says that the term “valid knowledge,” which is the minor term, has to be so far restricted in meaning that it applies only to the ortti-knowledge and not to the sāksi-consciousness which reveals pleasure or bliss; the vịtti-knowledge also has to be further narrowed down in its meaning so as to exclude the substantive part (dharmy-amśa) of all cognitions, the "this" or the "being" which is qualified by all cognitive characters. Pramānajñāna, or valid knowledge, which is inferred as removing a veil, means therefore only the cognitive characters revealed in the vṛtti. Even in the case of paroksa (mediate knowledge) there is the removal of its veil, consisting in the fact of its non-existence to the knower; which veil being removed, the object of the mediate cognition is revealed to the knower. Thus the valid cognition includes the cognitive characters as appearing both in mediate and in immediate urttis. The reason for the exclusion of the substantive part, or the "this," from the concept of valid knowledge under discussion is apparent from the fact that there is no error or illusion regarding the "this"; all errors or doubts can happen only with regard to the cognitive characters. The "this" is as self-existent as the experience of pleasure. There cannot, therefore, be any such objection as that in their case also there is a revelation of the unknown and therefore a removal of the veil. If, however, it is urged that, though there may not be any error or doubt regarding the "this,” yet, since there remains the fact that it was first unknown, and then known, and therefore it involves the removal of a
