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ETERNITY OR OTHERWISE OF A WORD
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being noticed there every moment,56 The contrary seems pointless because what should have been Jayanta's point has here become the Mīmāṁsaka's point. For Jayanta should have simply argued that two pronunciations of the same letter must be qualitatively different because thay are numerically different. In any case, under constant pressure from the Mimāmsaka Jayanta ultimately does say something like that. For when the Mimāṁsaka pleads that even an act of motion is somehow qualitatively different every moment Jayanta retorts : "Well then two pronunciations of the same letter too are qualitatively different.'*57 And now the Mimāṁsaka raises a new point, for he says : "Two pronunciations of a letter are different not because this letter is different in these two cases but because the same letter is associated with two different accidental adjuncts in these two cases, this being like a white crystal appearing red in the proximity of a red-coloured body."958 Jayanta in effect answers : “A white crystal is cognised even independently, but a letter is never cognised except in the company of an accidental adjunct of the type alleged, just as a cognition is never cognised except as a cognition grasping this or that object.59 Or we might say that two pronunciations of the same letter are mutually different just as white colour bright in one case dull in another."60 Really, Jayanta is labouring an obvious point; for two pronunciations of the same letter are doubtless different from one another. But this talk of 'accidental adjunct introduces us to a new circle of ideas essentially foreign not only to the Naiyāyika but to the Mimāṁsaka himself. For there were then current in our country so many 'nondualist' doctrines which say about this or that entity that it alone is really real while it appears to have become this thing or that on account of its association with an accidental adjunct; somewhat less sweeping was the doctrine that there exists only one soul which appears to be different on account of its association with this body or that. Now Jayanta warns the Mīmāṁsaka that his present mode of argumentation is dangerously similar to that adopted by the advocates of this latter doctrine-nay, to that adopted by the advocates of those various nondualist doctrines.61 In this connection Jayanta particularly refers to the three instances just considered by him; thus he says that on the logic presently adopted by the Mimāṁsaka one might as well say that there is one eternal act which appears to be different from moment to moment, that there is one eternal cognition which appears to be
