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LIBERATION AND ITS MEANS ....
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dissoluble into Brahman like sky-confined-to-jar, sky-confined-tocloth etc. ultimately dissoluble into sky; Jayanta's simple argument is that jar, cloth etc. being something real can delimit a sky-part but nescience being something unreal cannot thus delimit Brahman and hence produce individual souls. Similarly, Jayanta dismisses as untenable the Vedāntist's plea that no ‘mutual dependence' vitiates the latter's position inasmuch as the series of a nescience and an individual soul is beginningless just like the series of a seed and a sprout, the former's point being that such a plea makes sense only in case 'nescience' is something real as are a seed and a sprout or nescience as conceived by the non-illusionist schools of philosophy.24 Then Jayanta considers the Vedāntist's explanation of how a product of nescience can act as a genuine means of mokşa, the former's general point being that in all the analogies cited in this connection the means is as mych real as the end sought.35 Thus, for example, the arrangement of lines standing for a letter is as much real as this letter itself, it being an immaterial consideration that these lines are not themselves this letter; Jayanta's point is that anything can be made to stand for any thing just as a counterfeit coin passes for a genuine coin (really, he is having in mind the symbol-symbolised relationship).36 Similarly, on Jayanta's showing the alleged case of an illusory snake causing real fear is in fact a case of the cognition-of-snake causing fear, the cause being as much real as the effect; citing another case of a cognition causing fear etc. he says that on merely hearing that a lion is coming people develop fear etc.37 Again, Jayanta concedes that the reflection cast by a thing in a shining medium often exhibits features absent in this thing but his point is that here too the medium is as much real as the thing. 38 Lastly, Jayanta concedes that one can well experience cold sensation in one part of body, hot sensation in another part, but his point is that a body is really divided into verious parts so that there is nothing incongruous about one bodily part behaving in one fashion, another in another fashion.39 Thus concluding his enquiry Jayanta remarks : "If nesciense is not something real then the things you describe cannot take place, but if nescience is something real then the doctrine of non-difference holds no water.”40 In all this what Jayanta is driving at makes perfect sense, but we have to keep in mind that in postJayanta period highly subtle texts were composed to defend a case he here presents and criticises in all its crudeness.
