Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

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

Page 88

VALID KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD
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it is not a knowledge of the new, but of the already known (adhigata).
Of course, the Bhāttas contend that the continuous cognition refers to new objects in all its parts The series of cognitions occurs at different instants of time. The thing as thus connected with different times, though apparently the same, becomes really different objects for our persistent knowledge of it. The successive cognitions are valid in so far as each apprehends the object as qualified by a different time and therefore as something new. The Advaita Vedānta suggests another way out of the difficulty According to it, persistent knowledge is valid either because its different parts perceive aifferent instants of time or because it is one single cognition as long as it persists and no new mental modification is produced. A continuous cognition is thus one present knowledge manifesting one thing which was previously unmanifested. So the question does not arise as to whether the series of cognitions apprehends new objects or not.
To this the Navyäyıkas object that the instants of time (ksana) cannot be perceived by us. The different instants, entering into the persistent cognition, being unperceived, cannot be said to constitute different objects for the series of cognitions 4 Were these temporal differences apprehended and wedged mto the body of the continuous cognition, its continuity would be broken up and our sense of continuity be lost. As that is not the case, we are to say that in persistent knowledge the series of cognitions refer to one and the same object. Nor can it be urged that persistent knowledge is a single state of cognition enduring for some time. Although from a subjective standpoint continuous cognition
1 NVT, p 21 2 SD., p 45 3 VP , Chap I. 4 NVT, ibid.