New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 108

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New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
modes are cognized in succession.25*
In brief each cognitive process is incomplete in a sense, because it can be supplemented by many other relevantly-related processes which may form a compact process that unfolds gradually more and more particularised modes of an object.
The mental perception like the sensuous perception also takes place gradually in four stages, viz. determinate perception (avagraha), speculation (inā), judgment (avāya), and retention (dhāranā). In the sensuous perception the senses are active upto determinate perception (avagraha), and the function of the mind starts from the speculation (iha) onward. The function of the senses is limited to the cognition of the object as present before them at the moment. The thought that follows this is not the function of the senses, but of the mind. The question may rise why such cognition should be designated as a sensuous cognition when it is the mind that directs it to the stage of perceptual judgment (avāya) followed by retention (dhāraņā)? The reply is that the process of such cognition starts from a sensuous determinate cognition which relates to a particular external object of a particular sense which is responsible for its being designated as a case of sensuous cognition and not of a mental thought. The
*The tetrad of determinate perception, speculation, perceptual judgment and retention are of two kinds, viz. (i) concerned with the fundamental modes and (ii) concerned with the secondary modes, the former being called the ultimate (naiscayika) and the latter practical (vyavahārika).
In one tradition the determinate perception (avagraha) is a specific cognition. According to it the darsana (intuition) e.g., 'this is something' relates to a particular aspect which is indistinct (avibhājita višesa), while avagraha (determinate perception) relates to a particular that is distinct, e.g. the proposition 'it is colour'. As regards the distinction between samsaya (doubt) and iha (speculation), the former is expressed in propositions like 'it is white or black' while the latter in proposition like 'it should be white'. As regards avāya (perceptual judgment) it is expressed in the judgment 'this is only white and not black'. According to Akalanka 'He is a person' is a case of avagraha (determinate perception). The curiosity about the particular characteristics such as the language, age etc. is iha (speculation). Avāya (perceptual judgment) consists in certitude arrived on the basis of the cognition of the specific character, e.g. the judgment 'this person is a southerner, this person is young'.
Acarya Jinabhadra has considered this process of avagraha (determinatepercertion), ihā (speculation), and avāya (perceptual judgment) as only provisional and elative, because at every stage it is generic with reference to the succeeding process until the ultimate particular or distinctive aspect is not arrived at. The intermediate processes in such a series of processes are generic-cum-specific, whereas the first and the last are purely generic and specific respectively.