Indian Logic Part 02

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

Page 58

PERCEPTION
47
question to the Buddhist as follows : "If the attribution of a classcharacter, etc. to a thing is a case of false cognition, then why does this cognition not get cancelled as does the mistaken cognition of nacre as silver ?*9 The Buddhist's reply is again revealing even if again misconceived. For the following is what he says : “The mistaken cognition of x as not-x gets cancelled in case not-x is something apart from x, but a class-character, etc. are nothing apart from the unique particular to which they allegedly belong. That is why the mistaken cognition of a class-character, etc. is not cancelled, and that is why a thought is neither a case of true cognition (=pramāna) nor a case of false cognition but a third sort of something."10 Really, this argument is neither here nor there. The Buddhist realizes that a correct identification of a thing on the part of thought cannot be dismissed as a case of false cognition, but he has also persuaded himself that bare sensory experience is aldne .pramāņa. He therefore says that a thought is neither a case of pramāņa nor a case of false cognition but a third something, a statement which as it stands is senseless. It is correct to argue that a thought as such is neither a case of true cognition nor a case of false cognition, because a thought might be either of the form of true cognition or of the form of false cognition; but what is thus argued is very different from what the Buddhist actually says.
After thus presenting the Buddhist case as defended by the Buddhist himself Jayanta begins his own criticism of this case. He first enumerates the several grounds on the basis of which the Buddhist has declared kålpanā to be no pramāņa and then considers them one by one. He begins by assailing the Buddhist's argument that kalpanā is no pramāņa because it has for its object what a word stands for, that is, something unreal; on Jayanta's showing what a word stands for, viz. a 'universal', is cognized by nirvikalpaka perception as much as by savikalpaka perception." Really, on the question as to what is cognized by nirvikalpaka perception both the Buddhist and Jayanta are wrong; for nirvikalpaka perception being, in fact, the physiological process of sensory experience and not cognition proper, there arises no question as to what is cognized by nirvikalpaka perception. Moreover, Jayanta's position that a 'universal' exists in the form of an independent real by the side of particular things is of doubtful validity. But liberally understood his present contention is that whatever object produces nirvikalpaka perception is the object cognized by savikalpaka perception, and that is substantially sound;