Indian Logic Part 01

Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

Page 44

PAMANA ARTHĀPATTI AND ABHAVA
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apart from the respective actions of these members themselves; so when the opponent pleads that fuel burns even taken singly but cooks rice only in the company of other members of the concerned causal aggregate Jayanta retorts that even in their company fuel does nothing save burning, his point being that the result concerned is the new thing that is jointly brought about by the members of a causal aggregate. 38 Then it is the opponent who poses a dilemma : If the result is something already accomplished there is no sense in bringing it about, if it is something to be accomplished then it must be of the form of an operation; Jayanta retorts that the result is something to be accomplished and yet not of the form of an operation (the opponent is however allowed the freedom to define operation as "something to be accomplished' and then call the result an operation in his own technical sense).39 in desperation the opponent asks: “What then constitutes cooking ? Certainly, the verb 'to cook' cannot be meaningless." Jayanta replies that the respective actions of the members of the concerned causal aggregate are themselves "what constitutes cooking but these actions as determined by (= as aimed at) the result concerned (the reply'is buttressed by the consideration that about each of these members it can be said that it is undertaking, cooking).40
Jayanta sums up the above general discussion by examining the specific case of cognition which he considers to be a quality of soul and the Kumarilite an operation undertaken by soul. He begins by emphasising the established position of his school that a soul undertakes to action but just possesses qualities like cognition, pleasure, pain etc.* ? Then an appeal is made to the circumstance that one is often in a position to say "I cognize such and such an object"; his point is that cre cognition is being referred to as something perceived but that since cognition conceived as an operation is something imperceptible on the opponent's own showing cognition here referred to must be a quality rather than operation 4 2 Jayanta knows that the opponent will plead - and not implausibly - that here is a case of an