________________
VALID KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD
63 well as the ground of a discriminative cognition of the object in question. Hence the content of an object (arthākāra) is pramāņa in so far as it establishes an identity between the object and our knowledge of it.” 1
The Nyāya rejects also the above view of the Bauddha realist. To it, the view that the content of the object is the ground of its knowledge because it ensures correspondence between the two, is not intelligible. It cannot mean that the content of the object reproduces itself as the content of cognition, for the same thing can not act as a cause in relation to itself Nor can it mean that the object's content is revealed by its cognition The content being identical with the cognition need not be revealed or manifested by another act of cognition. Vor again can it be taken to mean that the object's content is what discriminates a cognition and thereby produces a discriminative knowledge of itself. The content and the cognition being identical the one cannot discriminate the other. The law of discrimination requires that the discriminator must be somehow different from the discriminated. When I discriminate a blue colour, I am obviously different from and stand over against the colour which is an object of my thought. All discrimination must take place in this way. The same thing canuot therefore be both the object of knowledge and the content of knowledge ?
The Nyāya criticism of the Bauddha view of correspondence between knowledge and its object contains an element of important truth. It has the effect of showing that the correspondence between knowledge and its object has no meaning when, as on the Bauddha view, the two become fused together as one stuff It is meaningless to speak of correspondence between knowledge and its object, if we take them as identicals or absolute similars. Correspondence
1 Vide NVTP., pp 152-54 (Bib. Ind. Edn.) 2 Vide NVTP., pp 177 f.
