Indian Logic Part 02

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

Page 15

INDIAN LOGIC
understanding being that the word means “the total causal aggregate that produces valid cognition'; but this definition says that pratyaksa is the cognition of such and such a description, and that at once creates a difficulty which Jayanta seeks to obviate in his own manner. Thus he in essence considers three alternatives, viz.
(i) the word 'pratyakşa' here means something that causes
perceptual cognition; (ii) it means the total causal aggregate that produces perceptual
cognition; (iii) it means perceptual cognition itself:'
Against the first alternative Jayanta's first objection is that on adopting it we should be left in the dark about so many other things
- e.g. a sense-organ or a cognition not covered by the description in question -- that certainly go to produce valid cognition (in fact, about the whole of the concerned causal aggregate except the cognition here described); to this is added that the cognition here described might go to produce a mnemonic cognition, a doubtful cognition, an erroneous cognition, or it might even go to produce no cognition at all, and that in none of these cases will it deserve to be called 'pramāna (=something that causes valid cognition)?.? Against the second alternative Jayanta's objection is that on adopting it the words actually employed here will have to be subjected to a tortuous interpretation (for as they naturally stand they hardly yield a description of the total causal aggregate that produces perceptual cognition.)' Against the third alternative Jayanta's objection is that on adopting it the definition in question fails to become, as it should, a definition of something that causes perceptual cognition for now it will be a definition of perceptual cognition itself). And Jayanta's way out of the difficulty is to place a forced interpretation on the original aphorism so that instead of meaning “perception is that cognition which is etc." it should mean "perception is what goes to produce that cognition which is etc."; (in Sanskrit the result comes about by treating as understood a single word 'yatah (=from which)'). As a matter of fact, unlike the later Nyāya authors the original aphorist understood by the word pramāna'not something that causes valid cognition but just valid cognition; and Jayanta's solution of a difficulty which is virtually his own creation is nothing short of verbal jugglery. However, the solution of the same difficulty was sought for in another direction also, and the search is highly revealing though not for the reasons actually adduced by the Nyāya