Jaina Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyapith Ahmedabad

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JAINA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
nothing but the consolidation of perception for a certain length of time. It is not the condition of recall in the future, since it is a kind of perceptual cognition and, hence, cannot last upto the time of recollection. Furthermore, if it were to last up to that time, it would be impossible to cognise anything else during that interval, inasmuch as even the exponents of the said view are not prepared to admit the presence of two conscious activities at the same time. Thus, how can retention be defined as the condition of recall ? We recollect our past experience on account of the special capacity of soul to remember past events. Retention cannot be regarded as the cause of recollection. However, it can be admitted as a remote cause of recall, and not as the immediate one, since it is not an impossibility to admit so many remote causes of an event.44 Hemacandra does not totally agree with this view. He supports the other view also. According to him, 'retention is the condition of recollection'.45 This condition is nothing but the causal stuff capable of change into the effect called recall that consists in the recollection of past events. To express the same idea in a different manner, retention is nothing but the latent mental trace left over as legacy by previous experience. It is, thus, the continued existence of a particular perceptual judgment for a certain length of time. Hemacandra further remarks that this latent mental trace should be admitted as a species of cognition on the ground that it is a kind of nonverbal comprehension. It should not be supposed that it is different from cognition as such, because if it were not cognitive in character, it could not produce recall which is a kind of cognition. One kind of existence is impossible to