Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

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

Page 45

26 NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE nected with right or wrong cognitions in the past and so, is or is not in accord with the real nature of the objects remembered. Dreams illustrate what is intrinsically false memory. According to the Nyaya, dream-cognitions are all memorycognitions and untrue in character. They are brought about by the remembrance of objects experienced in the past, by organic disorders and also by the imperceptible influences of past desires and actions (adrsta) ? Hence dream-cognitions have sometimes a moral value in so far as they produce pleasurable or painful experiences in the self according to the merit or demerit accruing from the actions of waking life Dream-knowledge, however, is intrinsically false It is no doubt related to certain objects of the real world But these objects as cognised in dream are not present to sense. They are either past or remote. Still in dreim, objects are actually represented as present Hence there is in dream a false cognition of the real when it represents the not-present as the present, the 'that' as the *this '! It may so happen that dreams sometimes turn out to be true and tally with the subsequent experiences of waking life. But such correspondence between dream-cognitions and waking experience is neither normal nor invariable. Hence dream can never be called pramana, or the source of such presentative knowledge as has a real and an invariable correspondence with the object The Nyaya account of dream ignores the fact that dreamcognitions are as good presentations as our ordinary perceptions Dreams have not the regularity and orderliness of waking perceptions. But otherwise the two are indistinguishable. The presentative character of dreams has been rightly noted by other systems. The Vaisesika considers 1 Svapne tu sarvameva jnanam smaranamayatharthar ca, TB ,P 30 ? Svapoastu adubhutapadarth asmaranaih adrstena dhatudosena ca janyate, TM, 3 Dogavasena taditi sthapa idamityudayat, TB, p 30,