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moment rather than a jar-moment because of the availability of a new accessory in the form of a stick.44 It is in this connection that it is argued that if a thing survives the first moment after the moment of its birth it might as well last for ages inasmuch as in that case it has demonstrated that it is not perishable by nature.45 As we have seen, it is an argument like this that Jayanta has so miserably failed to understand.
These four arguments are followed by two more which are more or less faulty because they are based on epistemological considerations more or less faulty. Thus it is first argued that the testimony of recognition does not refute momentarism because recognition is not a case of valid cognition; then it is argued that the testimony of perception establishes momentarism because perception lasts for a moment and reveals a genuine real. Of course, while advancing the former argument it is rightly emphasised that if momentarism is vindicated with the help of a valid inference then no other type of testimony can undo this vindication.46 Really, inference is required to establish momentarism precisely because superficial observation as is recognition which we meet with in our everyday experience does not decide the issue. Thus the opponent might be wrong in saying that the testimony of plain recognition refutes momentarism, but the Buddhist is no less wrong when he says that a recognition being both of the form of an amalgam of a perception and a memory is not at all a case of valid cognition;47 for.we know that recognition is not only a case of valid cognition - but the model of valid cognition. Again, we know that the Buddhist mistakenly identifies perception with bare sensory experience which in fact is not at all a case of cognition proper, so that it too is wrong on his part to say that the testimony of perception establishes momentarism.48 True, like all production the production of a bare sensory experience takes place within a moment and the thing acting on a sense-organ in this connection is a real thing, but to admit all this is not to say that the testimony of bare sensory experience (miscalled 'perception') establishes momentarism.
Like the Buddhist's presentation of his thesis on momentarism Jayanta's refutation of it too contains much sidetalking; so it is necessary to pick out the crucial elements of this refutation. Jayanta begins by doubting the validity of the definition that a real thing is that thing which is causally efficient, but then grants its validity for
