Book Title: Indian Logic Part 01
Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

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Page 123
________________ INDIAN LOGIC Even Akalanka agrees with Dharmakirti in so far as he holds that it is a cognition that should be regarded as pramāna (instrument). The reasons why he upholds this view are the same as those advanced by Dharmakirti. 37 But this view of his means that the quality called knowledge is the main or the most efficient cause of a particular mode of this quality knowledge. Here by pramāna he means the main or the most efficient cause of the resultant coġ. nition. And because particular piece of valid cognition is a mode of the quality knowledge (a quality which belongs to the substance soul), the two are regarded by him as identical as well as different 38 It is interesting to note that Akalařka for the first time takes clear note of and endorses the relativistic Nyāya. Vaiśéşika position according to which the intermediary links in the causal chain of a cognitive process are, each of them, a pramāña as well as an effect of pramāna.89 Later on, a Jain logician like Hemacandra goes one step further and observes that because knowledge is determined to be knowledge of the blue' or knowledge of the yellow' on the basis of its mode it is this mode that should be regarded as the pramana and the knowledge as a whole of that particular time as the resultant cognition. Here the word 'pramana' means the determinant of a particular piece of valid cognition. The influence of Dharmakirti is evident here. Ac. Hemacandra follows Dharmakirti in positing the relation of the determinant and the determined (vyavasthapya-vyavasthảpakubhāva) between the instrument and the resultant cognition. But prior to Ac. Hemacandra, the Jaina logicians have criticised Dharmakirti for having done so. How do we know knowledge ? : The Buddhists, be they realists or idealists, consider cognition to be self-revelatory.* 1 The Jainas, the Prābhākaras: and the Vedāntins agree with the Buddhists: but the Bhattas and the Naiyāyikas uphold some peculiar views. According to the Bhattas a cognition is not only pot self-revelatory but is not even perceptible. It is inferred from the result of cógnition, that is, from the cognisedness or manifestness (iñatard) produced by cognition in the object cognised. For example, when we know a jar we have an apprehension that the jar is cognised by us; and from this cognised oess of the object we infer the existence of cognition; a comption is inferred from the cognised

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