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JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
the cow. This stage of memory is called localisation. Thus, retention implies the process or power of preserving the unconscious traces or dispositions of past percepts. Reproduction is the revival of past percepts in the form of images and ideas that pre-supposes the retention of those percepts in the shape of mental traces. Recognition means the cognition of an object knowing it to be old and familiar or as something perceived before. Localisation is the recognition of the object having a temporal and spatial reference to it. In the light of modern psychology, it will be easy to understand the Jaina concept of memory. We have already discussed the position of retention as a latent mental trace. Now, let us turn to the nature of recollection which is also known as reproduction, revival, recall, or representation.
RECOLLECTION
Recollection is the cognition that has the stimulus of a latent mental trace for its condition. It refers to its content by a form of the pronoun that.'2 The latent mental trace is nothing but the disposition retained by our past experience. Its emergence to the surface of consciousness constitutes the stimulation of recollection. The emergence of recollection is necessarily conditioned by this sort of stimulation. Unless and until this type of stimulation is present, recollection cannot emerge. But how does the latent mental impression serve as the stimulus for the emergence of recollection? It requires another stimulus. The disposition of past percepts, though it may have continued for a certain length of time, does not operate as the cause of recollection unless it is awakened by another stimulus. The stimulus to excite it is admitted to be two-fold by the Jaina.? First of all, the person reproducing his past experience must be competent to do so. Now, what is this competency? It is nothing but the destruction-cum-subsidence of the obscuring karmic veils. This condition is common to every type of cognition. Even the
est type of knowledge, viz., omniscience cannot emerge unless
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1 Psychology (Dutt), pp. 117-8. 2 Vasanodbodhahetukā tadityakārā smytih.
Pramāņa-mīmāmsā, 1, 2, 3. 3 Avaranakşayopašamasadyśadarśanādisāmagrilabdhaprabodhā
tu smytim janayati. Commentary on Pramāņa-mimāmsā, 1, 2, 3.
