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68
NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
these eternal principles can be valid, since it cannot be knowledge of what was not at all known before. Further, our knowledge of ordinary objects is, more often than not, a knowledge of what was previously known. But that does not make them less valid than the most valid knowledge we can have.
Again, the validity of pratyabhijñā or recognition, as a form of knowledge, becomes inexplicable. To recognise a thing is to know it as what was once known before. In it the object that is now perceived is directly felt as the same thing that was perceived before. We have, for example, the judgment 'this is that man whom I saw yesterday'. The 'this' of the present perception is identified with the 'that' of past perception. Recognition cannot, therefore, be a knowledge of what was not knownStill all men including tbe Bhāttas, admit that recognition is form of pramā or true knowiedge But consistency requires tbat we must either give up the idea of novelty (anadhigatatra) as a characteristic of pramā or say that recognition (pratyabhijñā) is not true knowledge, 1.e. Is apramā. In fact, however, no knowledge is made true or false by reason simply of its originality or unoriginality The truth of knowledge does not depend on the newness of its object.
In the case of what is called dhārāvāhıkajñāna or persistent knowledge, the Bhātta definition of pramā obviously fails. When the same thing is known by a man for some time there is a continuous series of cognitions with regard to it. Here all the cognitions, which succeed the first and constitute the continuous series together with it, refer to the same thing that has been previously known by the first cognition. We cannot say that each member of the series refers to a new object. Hence persistent knowledge is, as the Bhātļas themselves admit, valid knowledge, although
1 NM, pp. 21-22
