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JAINA THEORY OF COMPREHENSION
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be transformed into another kind of existence which is oppisite in nature. If retention in the form of hidden mental trace were not cognitive in nature, it could not be an attribute of the self, inasmuch as the attribute of a conscious entity cannot be nonconscious in nature.46 Now, as regards the controversy between the two views as to the nature of retention, Hemacandra tries to reconcile it. The older Jaina thinkers assert that the absence of lapse is also a case of retention. The following statement of the Visesavasyakabhasya ‘the absence of lapse is retention may be quoted in support. How then have you stated that the condition of recollection alone is retention ? This is the problem that has been put before him. He gives the following answer : True, there is such a thing as absence of lapse which is called retention. But it is included within the fold of perception. This is the reason why it has not been separately mentioned. Perception when continued for a certain length of period is entitled as retention in the shape of absence of lapse. Or let us hold that absence of lapse is also a condition of recollection, and it has been included within the fold of retention as defined by us. Mere perception bereft of absence of lapse cannot give rise to recollection. The perceptual cognitions which are not of the nature of attentive reflection are almost on the level of the unattended cases of perception as the touch of grass by a person in hurried motion and such cases of cognition are incapable of giving rise to recollection.47
