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The Nyāya Conception of Universals
233
with those attributes without the knowledge of which the knowledge of a substance is impossible.1
The Buddhist has raised another difficulty. It is urged that if inference and language were cognisant of the same objective reality as sense perception is, then the difference of contents of the cognitions in question would be unaccountable. The criterion of the identity of objects is the identity of contents of the cognition in question. Thus, for instance, the thing perceived with the left eye is known to be identical with what is perceived with the right eye because the contents of the perceptual cognitions are not different. Hence only the sameness of content is proof of the same ness of the object. But this condition is found to be lacking in the case of verbal and inferential cognitions as compared with the perceptual cognition. In perceptual cognition, a real is cognised with all its distinctive individuality, as determined by the specific spatio-temporal setting together with its specific qualitative characteristics. But in inferential and verbal cognitions the supposedly identical object is felt as indistinct and with a character in which the individuality, constituted by diverse attributes, has faded out. It is a blurred picture, which cannot be specifically identified with this or that individual, that is cognised with its distinctive identity in perception. We know from the testimony of perception that one individual cow is different from another individual cow and also from a buffalo or a horse. But in non-perceptual cognition of the cow the content is felt as something different from a buffalo or a horse, no doubt, but the mutual difference of individual cows has faded out of it. Certainly this difference of the contents of the different kinds of cognition cannot be accounted for, if they are supposed to be cognisant of the self-same reality. Nor can the difference be accounted for by the difference of the modes of cognition, if the object were a self-identical fact. A reality cannot be
1. vicitraśaktitvac ca pramāņānām lingasya prasiddhapratibandhapratisandhānaśaktitvāt, sabdasya samayasimavikramatvāt, indriyasya tv arthaśakter apy a pekşaņāt. na tu sambaddho 'rtha ity eva pramanaih pramāpyate, atiprasangāt. yasya tū 'pādher upalambha eva yena pramāņena dharmy upalabhyate tasya 'nupalambhe sa tena no 'palabhyata iti param yujyate, sarvopadhyanupalambhe vă, tathā ca siddhasādhanam iti samkşepah. Ibid. p. 327.
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