Indian Logic Part 01

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

Page 62

PRAMANA ARTHAPATTI AND ABHAVA
to be the concerned cognizer's past stock of knowledge and its proper employment so as to enable thought to determine the nature of the object-to-be-cognized. But Jayanta's own list of these factors makes a curious reading; thus here the physical factors are a word, a probans, a lamp, a sense-organ, the mental factors knowledgeof-the-qualities, knowledge of probans, perception of similarity, hearing of words. Obviously, Jayanta has in mind his school's position that there are four types of pramāņa, viz. perception, inference, analogy, verbal testimony, and he has to point out as to what can possibly be a physical factor and what a mental factor in the case of each type. But this theory of fourfold pramāna obscures the important point that in all knowledge situation two necessary
elements are sense-experience and thought (both to be essentially conceived after the Buddhist fashion), this obscuration remaining there even after a subtype of perception 'called nirvikalpaka-pratyaksa has been posited in imitation of the Buddhist. Some idea of all this can be formed from Jayanta's consideration of his last point. For quoting Vātsyayana he enumerates three cases where just one pramāṇa is properly applicable and a case where three pramāņas are properly applicable, thus seeking to refute the Buddhist's contention that not more than one pramāṇa can cognize one and the same thing. The three pramāṇas in question are perception, inference, verbal testimony and we are told that one's knowledge of one's own two hands can be had through perception
alone, the knowledge of what has caused a cloud-thunder that is heard can be had through inference alone, the knowledge that the performance of - Agnihotra sacrifice leads to heaven can be had through verbal testimony alone, the knowledge that there is fire on the yonder mountain can be had through perception, inference as well as verbal testimony.33 Fortunately, Vātsyāyana is silent about analogy which is the fourth type of pramāṇa posited by his school, but as a matter of fact even verbal testimony, in order to be a source of valid cognition, must be treated as a case of inference, So the real question is as to when perception is to be had and when inference; and the answer is that a thing that is something present (i. e. something in contact with a sense-organ) is to be