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JAINA PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION
The Mimāmsakas might contend: Well, let reality be accepted as partaking of the nature of both being and non being, but that does not affect our position in the least, as we, too, have proved this very truth. Our contention is that only the positive element of being with which a sense-organ comes in contact is the field of perceptual cognition and as regards the element of non-being, it cannot be so. The latter is consequently held to be cognised by a separate means, viz., negation. How can then it be maintained that negation would have no separate object? The Jaina refutes this contention as under:
If the element of non-being be not different from the element of being, why should it not be liable to apprehension by perceptual knowledge? If, again, it be different, still it has to be admitted that jar and the like are perceived when a surface of land is perceived as in the form of the non-being of jar and the like. It is a universal rule that the non-apprehension of the non-being of anything is necessarily concomitant with the apprehension of its being.
Moreover, this so-called means of valid cognition is of no use being of the nature of mere negation of the five positive means of knowledge. And thus, it is the reverse of cognition and as such how can it function as a means of valid cognition? It follows, therefore, that negation as a means has no object, since there is nothing like pure non-being separate from the double nature of the real. The conclusion, therefore, is that it cannot be an additional means of valid cognition.
'That which is direct or immediate is perceptual cognition."
The directness or immediacy is defined as: consisting in either its independence of the services of another means or in
1. Visadah Pratyakṣam - Pramāņa-mīmāṁsā, I. 1. 13. Spastam pratyakṣam-Pramāṇa-naya-tattväloka, II. 2. Visadam pratyakṣamiti-Parīkṣā-mukha, II. 3.
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