Indian Logic Part 01

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

Page 86

PRÁMĀNA ARTHAPATTI AND ABHAVA
grants that all the absences' occurring at this place are cognized when this place is cognized (for 'a vacant place' meaning 'a place accompanied by all the "absences" that occur at this place'). However, the Kumārilite has a a point when he insists that the
in question is not a case of simple memory; for to cognize 'absence of x' is to cognize it consciously (just as to cognize x is to cognize it consciously) while it is admitted on all hands that in this case 'absence of x' was not cognized consciously at the time when the place was cognized, so that in this case there can take place at a later occasion no simple memory of absence-of-x'. This is not to say that the Kumarilite is also right when he insists that in this case 'absence of x' is cognized through a new called adhāva; for as has already been shown, here the earlier 'absence of x' is an implication of the fact that at a later occasion x is not recalled even while the place is being recalled.
Having thus disposed of the Kumārilite case on the question of the alleged new pramāna abhāva, Jayanta directs his attention towards the corresponding Buddbist case. The peculiarity of the Buddhist case is that here''absences' are not posited as a group of independent reals existing by the side of positive entites; even so, a view is here formulated as to what is meant when one says that one is cognizing an 'absence'. These two aspects of the Buddhist case Jayanta presents one by one and then criticizes them both from his own standpoint.
The Buddhist begins by submitting that an 'absence' is not something real, so that it is pointless to consider whether it is an object of this type of pramāņa or an object of that type of it.19 It is then 'argued that an 'absence' is doubtless not cognized independently as a positive entity, nor is it cognized as related to the place concerned, the time concerned, the counterpositive concerned.90 The suggestion that the relation of qualifier-and-qualificand obtains between an 'absence' and its locus is rejected on the ground that y cannot act as qualifier to x unless there already obtains between y and x either the relation called conjunction or that called inherence, it being further added that all relation of qualifier-and-qualificand is a subjective imposition on things rather than an objective property of things.1.