________________
JAINAS ON TESTIMONY
137
The defects are hunger, thirst, fear, anger, attachment, delusion, anxiety, old age, disease, death, perspiration, fatigue, pride, indulgence, surprise, sleep, birth and restlessness. One free from all these defects and possessed of sublime grandeur such as omniscience is called the perfect One. Words proceeding from his mouth, pure and free from the flaw of internal inconsistency are called āgama (verbal testimony). In that āgama, the principles are enunciated.'' For him, absence of hunger, thirst and such things constitute some of the marks of an āpta (reliable person). Kundakunda's definition of āpta is based on the Digambara tradition. It is noteworthy that Kundakunda recognises coherence or internal consistency as the essential feature of a true scripture.
The systematic treatment of Jaina logic starts from Siddhasena Divākara. In his short treatisę entitled Nyāyāvatāra, he defines sabda or verble testimony as a valid knowledge which arises from a right understanding of the words (tattvagrāhitayā) that express the real object and are not contradicted by perception and one's own accepted system. Words characterised by the two above-mentioned characteristics come from the mouth of an āpta - authority. And the purpose of verbal testimony is to instruct, to relate the nature of reality, to be beneficial to all and to remove false notions."
In the Daśavaikālika-Niryukti, it is said that āgama stands in need of no proof; it is self-established; hetu and udāharana are necessary only to elucidate the āgama. It did not occur to the persons of this period that even the āgama needs to be examined. They thought that they were composed by.an omniscient person and hence infallible. But how could one know that they were really composed by an omniscient person when the author had left the world long ago ? Some such cosideration seems to be at the back of Kundakunda's mind when he states that the words of an āpta are free from internal inconsistency. He means to say that a particular work should be considered to have been composed by an āpta if there do not occur in it contradictory statements. But is it not possible to speak the untruth consistently ? Again, is it not possible to have coherence in the body of knowledge inspite of its being wholly wrong? So, it seems that Siddhasena Divākara took a step in the right direction when he stated that verbal testimony to be pramāna must not be in conflict with perception in addition to its being self-consistent or coherent.12 Later logicians like Samantabhadra,13 Akalankał4 etc. collow him in this matter and add that it should not be contradicted
