Indian Logic Part 02

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

Page 22

PERCEPTION
11
(1)
Jayanta first of all considers the significance of the word indriyārthasannikarşotpanna (=born of a sense-object contact) occurring in the present description of perceptual cognition. In this connection he gives thought to the following seven questions :
(1) What is a sense-organ ? (2) What is an object ? (3) How many types of sense-object contact are there? (4) Why is sense-object contact necessary for perceptual
cognition ? (5) How is perceptual cognition caused by a sense-organ and an
object ? . (6) How to cover under this description the perception of a
mental state ? (7) How many conjunctions between cognitive organs take place
in a process of perception ? All these questions are of a most fundamental importance, but the noteworthy thing is that Jayanta's treatment of them is extremely summary (it taking up hardly two pages of the printed text). About the first two questions it might légitimately be pleaded that they are later on answered while covering the second Nyāya topic prameya (which includes both a sense-organ and an object), but the remaining questions deserved a detailed treatment here and now. True, certain aspects of the remaining questions too will be incidentally touched upon in the course of the commentation that immediately follows and is fairly lenthy, but the point is that they deserved a more than incidental treatment. Be that as it may, it is very necessary to be clear as to what the Naiyāyika understands by “perceptual cognition of an object'. In one word, it means that cognition of an object which takes place as a result of this object coming in contact with an appropriate sense-organ (of which there are five, viz. eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin). Here by 'object' is to be understood a physical substance or a property of it while a property is supposed to be of several sub-types, viz. quality, action, 'universal', 'absence'; (a ‘universal' or an 'absence' might reside in a physical substance but it might as well reside in a quality or an action which itself resides in a physical substance). Thus, for example, when an eye comes in contact with a jar, the 'object of perceptual cognition is the substance jar; when with the colour of this jar, it is