Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 32

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
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Prabhakara shows on every hand clear trace of derivation from the views of the Nyåya and Vaisesika, which again are ultimately based on popular psychology, such as appears fitfully in the Upanisads and in Buddhist texts. The essential feature is contact between the object and the organi of sense, which is essentially something real; but the unity of consciousness makes it clear that there inust be a further contact between the organ and the self, whether directly or mediately. The fact that, despite the presence of objects in contact with the senses, there may be no cognition of them, proves that the contact cannot be direct, but must be mediated by an instrumentality called mind It is this which prevents all facts being always and at once present to the self, and it is this which perceives pleasure and pain and brings them home to the self. It is through the mind also that the self experiences desire, aversion, and volition. But mind has no qualities, such as colour, smell or taste, and therefore for the cognition of colour it needs the aid of an organ which possesses that quality, namely, the eye, which to possess colour is its distinctive quality must be possessed of light, similarly there must be the nose, composed of earth, for the cognition of smell; the tongue, composed of water, for the cognition of savours; the skin, the crgan of air, for the cognition of touch; and the ear, consisting of the ether, for the cognition of sound; the organs themselves being imperceptible.
This doctrine, of course, rests on metaphysical grounds and assumes in its treatment of the organs the doctrine that like must be known by like. The deduction of the existence and atomic size of mind by Prabhākara rests on the basis of a doctrine of causation' which is different from, but allied to, that of the Nyāya, and which is applied to explain the partial and evanescent characteristics of our experience. Causes are either material or immaterial, the latter head covering all the circumstances which, in conjunction with a material cause, result in an effect. The immaterial or non-inherent cause may subsist either in the
Prakaranapancikā, pp. 52-54 ; cf. Slokasäritika, I, 1, 4, vv 157 €,