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INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
says to himself, 'the object lying there is not a jar', this illusion of his is removed by somehow producing in him thought to the effect 'the object lying there is not a non-jar'. Similarly, after seeing smoke-onthe-mountain a person falls under an illusion and says to himself, this mountain possesses no fire'; this illusion of his is removed by somehow producing in him thought to the effect 'this mountain is not a nonpossessor of fire”. In the former case the illusion is removed by pointing out such elements of sensory experience as signalize the presence of a jar; in the latter case the illusion is removed by pointing out such elements of sensory experience as signalize the presence of smoke and then recalling the universal rule, 'Wherever there is smoke there is fire'. This is the intended meaning of Dharmakīrti's famous couplet : tasmād dsstasya bhāvasya drsta evākhilo guṇaḥ / bhrānter niścīyate neti sādhanam sampravartate /P, a meaning through which the strength as well as the weakness of his position stand out most conspicuously. Dharmakīrti very correctly realises that sensory stimulation produced by a physical object is the indispensable starting point for all cognition concerning this object, his mistake lies in identifying this sensory stimulation with an all-comprehending cognition concerning this object; similarly, his description of how elements of sensory experience become a signal for the presence of the corresponding physical object is essentially correct, his mistake lies in supposing that this signalling activity is always preceded by an illusion concerning the identity of this object. Here we also get an inkling as to why Dharmakirti assigns an essentially negative rather than positive function to thought; in his eyes, thought is primarily meant to remove an illusion and only incidentally to produce a conviction. However, here another line of thought has also been operative. For what thought reveals about an object is what is common to several objects but Dharmakirti is of the view that each object has got just one positive nature which it does not share with any other; so according to him what several objects have in common is not any positive feature but just that feature which excludes them from everything else (i.e. what jars have in common is what excludes them from non-jars). In this way Dharmakīrti also feels justified in maintaining that bare sensory experience reveals the total nature of an object while a piece of thought concerning it reveals only an aspect of this nature. For sensory experience reveals an object as a bare particular, i.e. as something excluded from everything else, while a piece of thought reveals it as excluded from a particular set of objects;
