Book Title: Indian Logic Part 03
Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

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Page 112
________________ 101 SOUL. required that he should point out an instance where 'coordination' and 'co-location' have been perceived together. Sensing that such a pointing out will be suicidal for his case Jayanta, pathetically appealing to a Buddhist precedent, submits that not to find 'coordination present when the cognisers concerned are different is to find it present when the cogniser concerned is the same, just as on the Buddhist's showing not to find causal efficiency present in things permanent is to find it present in things transient." The opponent objects: "But that too can be said only in case one perceives oneself to be of the form of the same cogniser all the time; for otherwise it could well be that in one's own case there is 'coordination and yet the cognisers concerned are different."2 Jayanta answers: "One does not perceive oneself to be the same all the time; what happens is that one does not perceive oneself to be different at different times." The opponent objects: "But then there is no guarantee that one is really the same cogniser all the time; for it could well be that here there just arise different cognitions at different times, all forming a causal chain." Jayanta knows that the alternative thus suggested is the actual Buddhist alternative, and so he answers "How that is not the case we are going to demonstrate."24 Really, this whole argumentation boils down to saying that conceptual analysis reveals that 'coordination' between two experiences is not possible unless the agent undertaking 'coordination is the same as the agent having had both these experiences. But then Jayanta must also somehow reject the materialist alternative that this common agent is the concerned living body itself: this he does by submitting that a living body is not something that remains the same all the time but something that changes from moment to moment, his chief point being that the very possibility of the consumed food being digested implies that the living body undertaking digestion changes from moment to moment. In this connection Jayanta reports about a curious point of difference obtaining between the Nyaya and Vaiseṣika philosophers, (usually taking a common position on ontological matters). Thus on the Nyaya-Vaišeṣika view a physical body made up of the element earth develops new sensory qualities and gives up the old ones as a result of being heated; (since as here conceived most things of our everyday experience are made up of the element earth and since the phenomenon of heating is here understood in a

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