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XI] Thought and its Object in Buddhism and Vedanta
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briefly explained in the tenth chapter of the present work1. One of the most important texts of this school is the Siddhānta-muktavali by Prakāśānanda2. Prakāśānanda seems to have taken his inspiration from the Yoga-väsiṣṭha, and he denied the existence of things when they are not perceived (ajñāta-sattvānabhyupagama). He tried to show that there were no grounds for holding that external objects existed even when they were not perceived or that external objects had a reality independent of their perceptions. Examining the capacity of perception as a proof to establish this difference between perception and its object, he argued that, since the difference between the awareness and its object was a quality of the awareness, the awareness itself was not competent to grasp this quality in the object, as it was one of the constituents of the complex quality involving a difference of the awareness and its object; to assert the contrary would be a fallacy of self-dependence (ātmāśrayatva). If the apprehended difference is a complex, such as "differencebetween-awareness-and-its-object," and if this complex is a quality which is apprehended as existing in the object, it has to be assumed that, in order that the nature of awareness may be realized, vindicated or established, it must depend upon itself involved as a constituent in the complex "difference-between-awareness-and-itsobject" directly and immediately--which comes to the same thing as saying that awareness becomes aware of itself by being aware of itself; this is impossible and is called the logical fallacy of self
A History of Indian Philosophy, vol. 1. pp. 477-478, by S. N. Dasgupta, published by the Cambridge University Press, 1922.
2 Prakāśānanda refers to the arguments of Prakāśātman's (A.D. 1200) Pañcapādikā-vivarana and Sarvajñātma Muni's (A.D. 900) Samkṣepa-sariraka and refers approvingly to Sureśvara, the author of the Naişkarmya-siddhi. Appaya Dikṣita (A.D. 1620) refers to Prakāśānanda in his Siddhanta-lesa (pp. 13,72). Nānā Dikṣita, a follower of the school of Prakāśānanda and author of the Siddhānta-dipikā, in a commentary on the Siddhanta-muktāvalī, gives a list of Vedanta teachers. In this list he mentions the names of Prakāśānubhavananda, Nṛsimha and Raghavendra Yati. Venis thinks (see The Pandit, 1890, pp. 487-490) that Prakāśānubhava is the same as Prakāśātman and Nṛsimha the same as Nrsimhasrama Muni, who is said to have converted Appaya Dikṣita to Sankara Vedanta, and thinks that Prakāśānanda lived in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, being wedged in between Nrsimha and Appaya. Though it would be difficult to settle his time so precisely and definitely, yet it would not be wrong to suppose that he lived some time towards the latter half of the sixteenth century. Prakāśānanda's doctrine of Drști-srsti is apparently unknown to the earlier Vedantic works and even the Vedanta-paribhāṣā, a work of the carly sixteenth century, does not seem to be aware of him, and it appears that the earliest mention of his name can be traced only to Appaya, who lived in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Prakāśānanda may thus be believed to have lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century.
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