Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta

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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
is a form of qualified perception and bas reference to the direct presentation of some object, although it involves an element of representation.' In memory, however, there is only a revival of our past experiences, in the form of ideas and images, in the same form and order in which they were actually experienced by us at a certain point of past time. The ground or condition of this revival is of course the latent impressions left by our past experiences and retained by the soul.? When the mind comes in contact with such psychic dispositions (Uhāvanā) there is a remembrance of the corresponding original experiences. Memory being thus a cognition, by the same self, of what has been once cognised, is an evidence for the soul's permanence. As to the general character of memory we may, therefore, say that it is knowledge arising solely out of the impressions of previous experiences and pertaining to a permanent soul.
While memory has for its general conditions some original past presentation (pūrvānubhava) and its impression (samskāra), it has a number of specific causes that serve either to retain the impressions or revive them in consciousness, and thereby bring about the phenomenon of memory. Among these are (1) attention (pranidhāna) which fixes anything in the mind, (2) association (nibandha) which connects different experiences and makes them suggestive of one another, (3) repetition (abhyāsa) which secures persistence for the impressions, (4) sign (linga) that leads the mind to the thing signified, (5) characteristic mark (laksana) that recalls the class to which an object belongs, (6) similarity (sādrśya) tbat associates the ideas of like things, (7) ownership (parigraha) which is suggestive of the owner or the thing owned, (8) dependence (āśrayāśritasambandha) of which one term suggests the other, (9)
TD, p 33 Anubhuva janyā smstihet urbhāvanā, ātranātravrttih, TS, P 85,