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

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Page 134
________________ TEN PRAMEYAS BODY ETC. 123 something inanimate is rejected on the ground that buddhi, since it performs acts like cognition etc, cannot be something inanimate. 57 To this is added that the Sānkhyite himself says that the characteristic attribute of buddhi appears as if present in a purusa and vice versa, Jayanta's point being that it should not be much difficult for the Sārkhyite to do away with the duplication in question; the plea that a purusa after all requires an eternal instrument is rejected on the ground that this eternal instrument should be conceived after the manner of manas posited by the Naiyāyika.58 Then Jayanta pointedly asks the Sānkhyite as to why a purusa should be treated as something inactive and its apparent activity attributed to the so-called buddhi.99 The latter pleads : "If a purusa be something active then its past acts being endless in number it should never attain moksa; on the other hand, if activity belongs to prakrti we can say that it binds a purusa through its activity and also releases it when its true nature is realised by this purușa”; Jayanta calls this plea 'idiocy of the whole world' and retorts : “Moksa should rather be impossible if it be due to the activity of an inanimate thing like prakrti, for about such a thing there can be no knowing as to when it will act, when not, in respect of which purusd it will act, in respect of which not."60 To all this criticism directly relevant for his purpose Jayanta adds a general criticism of the Sānkhya.doctrine of prakrti and its successive transformations, and an even more general criticism of the Sānkhya doctrine of causation. Thus the whole account of the alleged transformations successively undergone by prakrti is first summarily dismissed as 'an utterly blind tradition inherited from the past generations of teachers', not something based on a solid evidence;61 not much later on, it is pooh-poohed as a new Viśvāmitra-like creation undertaken by the Sānkhyite sage. '62 In this connection a 'particular butt of criticism is the idea that prakrti which is the rootstuff of things inanimate is possessed of pleasure, pain and delusion, the point being that it is rather the things inanimate which produce pleasure, pain and delusion.63 Also rejected as plainly ridiculous is the idea that buddhi produces ahaṁkāra (=ego-sense), ahamkara the five sense-organs and the five sensory qualities, the five sensory qualities the five physical elements - the point being that buddhi is but cognition, ahamkara a type of cognition, while the order-ofproduction here posited makes no sense at all.64 Then recalling that

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