________________
SOUL
,
95
conscious acts constitute an independent running-series having nothing to do with an abiding soul, and lastly argues against the materialist position that conscious acts are a performance of a body itself having nothing to do with a soul or anything of the sort. Perhaps, it would have been better if the course of enquiry was just reversed and Jayanta first argued why consciousness cannot be a property of a body, then argued why consciousness should be a property of an abiding soul, and lastly discussed whether or not a soul is a possible object of perception. However, even as it stands the enquiry is illuminating in various ways. Let us see how.
Jayanta begins by quoting the Cārvāka's basic materialist argument as follows : "The properties like cognition etc. belong to the physical elements themselves which owing to certain special circumstances have come to acquire a special capacity. Thus just as jaggery, grain-paste etc. turning into wine come to acquire an intoxicating power previously absent, similarly earth etc. assuming the form of a living body come to acquire consciousness previously absent. At the time of death these very earth etc. under the influence of disease etc. are rendered void of consciousness, but so long as they retain consciousness they go on perforrning acts like memory, recognition etc. Why then posit a soul to account for conscious acts like these, ?" However, a direct and detailed refutation of this argument Jayanta undertakes towards the very close of his present enquiry while for the present his only submission is that the Mīmāṁsakas and certain Naiyāyikas themselves would seek to answer the materialist by arguing that soul is an object of direct perception because a soul is what the common word stands for. Jayanta himself is of the view that soul is known not by way of direct perception but by way of inference and so he criticises the argument in question as offered by- the Kumārilite, the Prabhākarite and certain Naiyāyikas themselves. Really, the point of this entire controversy is pretty obscure. For it is difficult to be sure as to what is here to be understood by the idea of a soul being an object of perception. Thus in the case of a physical thing the Naiyāyika maintains that
it is an object of perception in case a sensory quality of it is being · cognised through the visual or the tactile sense-organ, but this
position has obviously no relevance for the question whether a soul is an object of perception. And leaving aside the technical Nyāya
