Indian Logic Part 01

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

Page 93

INDIAN LOGIC
to add that according to his Nyāya school an 'absence', just like a positive thing, is well capable of producing a perceptual cognition concerning itself.71 As a matter of fact, the Buddhist is very particular about insisting that a real, independent, physical thing acting on a sense-organ produces a perceptual cognition concerning itself, and since such acting is not possible on the part of a feature positive or otherwise of this thing he avers that such a feature is not a real, independent, physical thing; on the other hand, Jayanta's theory of 'contact' allows all sorts of features of a thing to become an independent object-of-perception. But here again one noteworthy point is that Jayanta would not let the Buddhist make a fundamental distinction between a positive feature and a negative one. Thus the Buddhist argues that if an 'absence' too can produce a perceptual cognition concerning itself .then nothing should distinguish an 'absence' from a positive thing; Jayanta retorts that an 'absence' produces one sort of perceptual cognition, a positive thing another sort of it, just as a colour produces one sort of perceptual cognition, a taste another sort of it.*s In this connection an incidental anomaly of the Buddhist's stand deserves notice. Thus according to him a physical thing is in fact a conglommerate of its five sensory features so that when he speaks of a physical thing acting on a sense-organ he thinks of the colour, taste etc. of this thing acting on an appropriate sense-organ; as for the rest of this thing's features, positive or otherwise, they, according to him, are but different aspects of this thing's nature. So when he argues that unlike a positive thing an 'absence does not produce a perceptual cognition concering itself he wishes to emphasize that an 'absence' is not an independent thing; Jayanta understands him to argue that a positive feature of a thing does and an 'absence' does not produce a perceptual cognition concering itself because the two are so unlike each other, and retorts that both do so just As both colour and taste do so even if colour and taste are so unlike each other. On his own presuppositions, the Buddhist should plead that a colour or a taste can produce a perceptual cognition concerning itself because it is an independent thing but that neither a positive feature nor an 'absence' charactersing this colour or this taste should produce a perceptual cognition concerning Itself because neither is an independent thing. Not that this way