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(172) : Nandanavana
Both of the above points are untenable in modern world of scientific attitude. It presumes that the scriptures are records of existing knowledge, which grows like a flowing river where modifications and new additions are always possible subject to the condition that they are obtained through the above processes. This fact is corroborated by the present scriptures themselves. The evolution of two varieties of Pratyakșa, mention of time as reality by some , different ways of expressing the eight fundamental qualities of a household and the variety of opinions regarding the functioning of eyes and other senses with
tner senses with or without the contact with the object expressed by Pūjyapāda and Vīrasena are but some examples. In fact it would be surprising how the knowledge could be supposed to be full well known when the world is always changing and developing out of various facts observed constantly.
The scriptures define knowledge as sākāra or with details with the first sub-stage of sensory observation without detalls have been called perception or Darsana (later on this word has a better developed meaning). Thus, the process of knowledge consists of mind activity associated with sensory or experimental observations. This is nothing but the other way of defining the word science of the current terminology as it is also a resultant of combination of intellectual activity coherent with sensory observation. The above-mentioned scriptural processes of obtaining knowledge are just akin to the same steps scientific studies have been following since their inception. Experimental observations, characterisation or classification and hypothesization or theorization - is the generally accepted scientific approach in a cyclic way. Thus, sense (or instruments) aided by mental activity is also the method of scientific studies. This makes it clear that even in olden days too, scientific methods were used for learning about things around. This method has been elaborated by Umāsvāti and his commentators have pointed out as many as 336 ways of sensory perceptions about things. It is presumed that the knowledge obtained by these would be correct and will have no debatable features unless the senses themselves are in abnormal situation. This being the basis of scriptural contents, it should be quite interesting to compare the knowledge gained on some common objects like matter with the current knowledge about them. Normally,
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