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INDIAN LOGIC
several objects have in common is not any positive feature but just that feature, which excludes them from everything else (i.e. what jars have in common is what excludes them from non-jars). In this way Dharmakirti also feels justified in maintaining that bare sensory experience reveals the total nature of an object while a piece of thought concerning it reveals only an aspect of this nature. For sensory experience reveals an object as a bare particular, i.e. as something excluded from everything else, while a piece of thought reveals it as excluded from a particular set of objects; and Dharmakirti suggests that 'exclusion from everything else constitutes the total nature of an object while 'exclusion from a particular set of objects' constitutes but an aspect of this nature. All this is very much confusing, but is the true indicator of the somewhat odd workings of Dharmakīrti's mind. Perhaps, most odd is his contention that bare sensory experience reveals a thing's total nature whose partial aspects are alone revealed by thought, only a little less odd his contention that thought notices, as belonging in common to several objects, features that are exclusively negative in import. However, reading between the lines one can easily see that Dharmakīrti has an almost correct understanding of the relative roles played in the knowledge-situation by bare sensory experience on the one hand and thought on the other, as also of the type of objective features - whether exclusively negative or otherwise - that thought manages to notice.
REFERENCES 1. PV (=Pramāņavārttika, ed. Rāhul Sānkstyāyana), II. 194 2. Ibid., II. 195-196 3. Ibid., II. 200-202 4. Ibid., II. 208 5. Ibid., II. 212. 6. Ibid., II. 213-214, 217-218 7. Ibid., II. 219. 8. Ibid., II. 398. 9. Ibid., III, 165-166 10. Ibid., II. 249-280 11. This is the central contention that emerges in the course of all his
defence of momentarism. For the momentary character of a mental state is seldom under dispute.
