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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
perception of what should have been perceived (yogyanupalabdhi). It can not be known by perception. Perception requires sense-object contact. But there cannot be any contact of sense with non-existence or negation. It is not, in some cases at least, known by inference. When we know the non-existence of a jar on the ground before us, we have a direct knowledge which is not mediated by any inferential reasoning. In such cases our knowledge of non-existence comes from non-perception as a distinct source of knowledge. As we have already said, non-existence is, according to the Bhāțţa Mimāmā and the Vedānta, both an objective character of things, and a character of the presentation of things. But it is not perceived like the whiteness of snow or the redness of a rose. On the other hand, we have an immediate feeling of it as a character of the presentation just when we have that presentation. This subjective feeling of the presented character as distinct or the discriminative feeling of it is what we mean by our knowledge of it. Anupalabdhi is this subjective feeling and is an independent source of the knowledge of nonexistence.
The Vaišeşıka and the Prabhākara school hold that non-existence is known by inference. According to the former the non-existence of the cause is inferred from the non-existence of the effect, just as its existence is inferrea from that of the effect. In the Prābhākara Mimārasā also non-perception is not regarded as a distinct source of the knowledge of non-existence. Rather, the non-perception of a thing is the condition from which we inler its nonexistence. The Sāmkhya" and the Nyāya system agree in holding that non-existence 18 known by perception. Accord
! VP , Ch. VI; SD, pp 88-87 ! P8, P 111 ; Upaskära, p. 228 3 SN., pp 8 f.
TKD , pp. 50-51,
