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LIBERATION AND ITS MEANS REFUTATION OF ILLUSIONISM
The twelfth and the last topic covered under the padārtha prameya is apavarga or mokşa, and it is this that Jayanta takes up in the present chapter (Ahnika IX). Following two relevant aphorisms of Nyāyasūtra he in this connection discusses two questions, viz. (i) what condition characterises the state of mokşa and (ii) what means lead to the attainment of mokşa. But to this discussion is appended one which, though very important in itself, has nothing particular to do with the problem of mokşa. For here Jayanta refutes the illusionist world-outlook as variously presented by three schools of Indian philosophy, an outlook that was a constant menace to all sober philosophising in our country. He would, of course, say that this refutation is relevant for a discussion on mokşa inasmuch as an advocacy of illusionism is incompatible with a belief in mokşa, but this sort of thing will be said by all Indian philosopher having one religious persuasion against all his rival having another. Be that as it may, we first examine Jayanta's discussion of those two questions related to the problem of moksa and then his refutation of these three illusionist schools of Indian philosophy.
(1) What Condition Characterises the State of Moksa ?
. The aphorist says that an absolute release from pain is what *constitutes moksa.' Jayanta explains that here pain means all experience of things which is in fact conducive to pain, so that an absolute release from pain means an absolute absence of nine qualities cognition, pleasure, pain etc. which characterise a soul in its embodied state. Really, a philosopher's concept of moksa is logically entailed by his concept of an embodied soul, for mokşa is after all nothing but the disembodied existence of a soul; and since mokṣa is aspired after because here all misery is supposed to vanish for good, it is natural for one believing in moksa to say that all worldly experience is somehow of the form of pain. Now Jayanta has already explained the topic pain by saying that all things of the
