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THREE MODES OF ORDINARY PERCEPTION
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relation between thought and language. According to them, all objects are inseparably connected with the words or terms denoting them. All our thoughts and cognitions of things are expressed in words and propositions. We cannot think of things except through their corresponding denotative terms.' Bhartshari, a grammarian philosopher, lays it down as a general rule that there can be no thought without language and that all knowledge must be verbalised experience It follows, therefore, that all our perceptions must be cognitions of objects as denoted by certain names or words. They must be expressed in propositions, in which the perceived thing and its qualities are related as subject and predicate. Hence there can be no nirvikalpaka perception in i be sense of a cognition which is independent of verbal expression and free from association with words or general terms. All per reption is thus savikalpaka or determinate knou ledge of objects as qualified by the atiriivutes piedicated of them. The Cārvākas recognise only savihalpaka or determinate perception, in which we cognise objects as possessed of a number of perceptible qualities. For them, niriikalpaka perception is a hypothesis which cannot be verified by actual experience. It is something which cannot be perceived and is therefore unreal.
With this we pass from the extreme view of perception as blind sensation to what appears to us to be another extreme view of it as a fully developed judyment expressed in a predicative proposition. This is met by an intermediate position that distinguishes between two modes of perception, namely, the nirvikalpaha and the savikalpaka, of which the former is a simple apprehension or judgment of an object without words, and the latter a predicative
1 Parve'rtbāḥ sarvatha sarvadă sarvatra Dámadbeyānvitäh, etc., NVT, P 125,
Na ro'sti praty yo loke yah sibdãougarádfte, anuuddhamiva bānam sarvard Babdenu gamyate. (Bhaitpbari, Kärikä quoted in Siddhantacandrika, pp. 89.40.)
NYT., pp. 125.26.
