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XXXVIII) Srīpati Pandita's Ideas
183 (vyavahārika-mātra-satyatvam). To this, however, one may relevantly ask the nature of such a character, which is merely pragmatic, for in such a case the Brahman would be beyond the pragmatic, and no one would ask a question about it or give a reply, but would remain merely dumb. If there were no substance behind the manifold appearances of the world, the world would be a mere panorama of paintings without any basic canvas. It has already been shown that the Upanişads cannot refer to a differenceless Brahman. If any experience that can be contradicted is called pragmatic (vyavahārika), then it will apply even to the ordinary illusions, such as the mirage which is called prātibhāsika. If it is held that to be contradicted in a pragmatic manner means that the contradiction comes only through the knowledge of Brahman, then all cases of contradiction of a first knowledge by a second knowledge would have to be regarded as being not cases of contradiction at all. The only reply that the Sankarites can give is that in the case of a non-pragmatic knowledge one has the intuition of the differenceless Brahman and along with it there dawns the knowledge of the falsity of the world. But such an answer would be unacceptable, because to know Brahman as differenceless must necessarily imply the knowledge of that from which it is different. The notion of difference is a constituent of the notion of differencelessness.
Neither can the conception of the vyavahārika be made on the supposition that that which is not contradicted in three or four successive moments could be regarded as uncontradicted, for that supposition might apply to even an illusory perception. Brahman is that which is not contradicted at all, and this non-contradiction is not limited by time.
Again it is sometimes held that the world is false because it is knowable (drśya), but if that were so, Brahman must be either knowable or unknowable. In the first case it becomes false, in the second case one cannot talk about it or ask questions. In this way Śrīpati continues his criticism against the Sankarite theory of the falsity of the world, more or less on the same lines which were followed by Vyāsatīrtha in his Nyāyā-msta. It is, therefore, unprofitable to repeat these, as they have already been discussed in the fourth volume of the present work. Srīpati also continues his criticism against the view that Brahman is differenceless on the
