Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Capacity for Valid Cognition
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those old texts there was no independent section dealing with the science devoted to the means-of-valid-cognition. An enterprise like this began in the period when philosophical aphoristic-texts were composed and went on making progress with the passage of time-so much that all the philosophers like Vedicists, Jainas, Buddhists, Carvākas, etc. were compelled to undertake in their texts such as a specially detailed discussion on the means-of-valid-cognition as was acceptable to them. By doing so they in a way also made it clear that whatever thay say or believe is based on these and similar means-of-valid-cognition, a procedure which should disabuse the rival disputant or listener of the illusion that whatever they were saying was based on the ideas related to means-of-valid-cognition entertained by him. Philosophical scholars have entered into an extremely deep discussion as regards means-of-valid-cognition just as they have entered into that as regards what constitutes an object-of valid-cognition. Thus having undertaken a most subtle possible consideration of the questions such as 'What is a means-of-valid-cognition ?', 'What goes to produce it ?', "What makes possible a knowledge of it?' they gave rise to an independent science dealing with means-of-valid-cognition (science of Logic ).13
In his Six Systems of Indian Philosophy' Max Muller while taking up the Nyaya system of philosophy says one thing viz. that the Indian philosophers discuss about the means-of-valid-cognition before they do about what constitutes an object-of-valid-cognition and that had this method been followed everywhere a good number of misunderstandings would have been avoided.
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From the standpoint of periodization the philosophical thought-current is very clearly found divided into two divisions; thus one division continues uptil the time of Buddha and Mahavira, the other uptil this day since that time. Of these, the first division includes portions of the old Upanisads, the old portions of Mahabharata, the old portions of Buddhist Pitakas and those of Jaina Agamas, the second the entire literature composed uptil today ever since the time of the philosophical aphoristic texts. Thus these two divisions of current, even while exhibiting mutual divergence from so many angles, equally reveal invariability and continuity as regards basic questions. The same chief philosophical questions that were considered in the earlier division of thought-current; and yet the two exhibit an enormous mutual difference. Briefly speaking, the differece pertains to the following two points (1) The characteristic feature of the old division of thought-current is that whatever a philosopher here seeks to establish he delineates through
13 For this see my essay discussing the problem of self-validity versus non-self-validity of cognition, Darshan ane Cintan' p. 1032.
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