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say a few things about transmigration, for even the position in question after all denies transmigration. Thus he rather unexpectedly concedes that a soul does not transmigrate from one body to another, but his point is that that is so because a soul is something ubiquitous." And this point is buttressed by positively submitting that one is in a position to perform conscious acts wherever one is and negatively that a body-sized soul cannot be something unchanging while a soul confined to some one part of body cannot activise the whole of this body. To this is added that even if ubiquitous a soul can perform conscious acts only at a place where the body available to it happens to be located, this body being an indispensable instrument of conscious activity.72 In this connection Jayanta recalls that the Nyāyasūtra aphorist has argued in support of rebirth on the ground that even a new-born babe expresses joy or sorrow, an expression impossible in the absence of a past experience associated with joy or sorrow. The materialist's suggestion that the babe's expression of joy or sorrow is due to some recent experience of this life itself is rejected as ungrounded.74 ,The materialist pleads : “The babe expressing joy or sorrow is a natural process just like the unfolding of the petals of a lotus";75 Jayanta retorts: "To say about a process that it is natural is not to explain this process. And the explanation is that the unfolding of the petals of a lotus is a physical process brought about through physical factors while the expression of joy or sorrow is a conscious process necessitating the positing of a soul."76 Jayanta's general understanding. as to what a real explanation is and what it is not is unexceptionable, and yet it is a moot point whether conscious activity necessitates the positing of an extra-body soul. His anti-materialist critique Jayanta closes with the submission that certain happenings pertaining to the life of a living being remain unexplained in terms of observable factors related to this life, this necessitating the positing of karma-done-in-a-past-life (= adrsta, lit. unseen) as the needed explanatory factor. Perhaps, Jayanta has to be reminded of his own recent advice that if in connection with some problem an explanatory factor is not readily at hand then it has to be strenuously looked for, but the difficulty is that he remembers this advice well and in fact claims that it is in conformity to this advice thai in connection with the present problem he posits past-life in the form of an explanatory factor 78
