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ON THE PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE
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seems to be a corollary of their fundamental position according to which an effect is quite different from its cause (arambhavada). One thing to be noted here is that they regard each stage in the process of cognition as an instrument as well as a resultant cognition-an instrument with respect to the succeeding stage that is generated by it and a resultant cognition with respect to the preceding stage whose result it is. '
Dharmakirti maintains that nothing but cognition (jñana) deserves to be called an instrument of valid cognition because it is the most efficient cause required to generate valid cognition. This is so for two reasons: (i) Sense-organs being non-conscious, it is impossible for them to generate cognition. (ii) It is mainly cognition that can enable us to attain the desirable and to avoid
e undesirable. 34 From this it can be deduced that out of the four causal conditions (pratyaya) it is the samanantara pratyaya (the immediately preceding cognition-moment) that is considered by him to be the main or the most efficient cause of valid cognition. Here by the word pramana he means the main or the most efficient cause required te generate the resultant cognition. But elsewhere he goes even a step further and considers the formal similarity obtaining between a piece of valid cognition and its object to be the instrument of this piece of valid knowledge. Thus he observes that because a particular piece of knowledge is determined to be (say) 'knowledge of the blue' or 'knowledge of the yellow' on the basis of the form it bears, it is this form that should be regarded as a pramāna (an instrument).' • Here he seems to have given up the idea of calling the main or the most efficient cause of a particular piece of valid cognition its pramana fïts instrument). In its stead he now deems it quite proper to call the form that determines a particular piece of knowledge to be knowledge of the blue' or 'knowledge of the yellow' its pramāna (its instrument). And a particular piece of knowledge and its form being absolutely identical, he regards the resultant cognition and its instrument as identical. As a Vijñānavadin he observes that the capacity of cognition to cognise itself is the instrument and its actual cognition of itself (svasanvedana) is the resultant cognition.".
