On Term Antahsamjna

Author(s): A Wezler
Publisher: A Wezler

Page 13

WEZLER : On the term Antahsam ima- :
123
they " withbold consciousness, do not reveal consciousness" ;55 and was it not just this feature which appeared disadvantageous to Medhātithi, persuading him to look for an alternative explanation ?
Indeed, the first explanation is tantamount to stating that plants are said to have internal cognition or consciousness because they don't reveal its usual signs in form of outward activity, i. e. the well-known corollaries of perception, etc. Nevertheless, Medhātithi cannot be reproached, like Sarvajñanārāyaṇa ($ 2. 4. 1 above ), for expecting his readers to believe that precisely that which forms a or the characteristic property of plants is not denoted by the term antaḥsamiña as explained by him. For the matter is different in the present case : To call plants antaḥsamiñu because they lack the corporeal reactions usually caused by cognitive or other mental acts, is not at all strange; on the contrary, it cannot but be styled as absolutely plausible provided it is realized that plants were given this name precisely to prevent the misunderstanding that they lacked not only external but also internal consciousness and cognition. That is to say: If this assumption is correct, then the term antaḥsamjña was coined in order to empha. size that, as for plants, appearances are — once more -- deceptive, i. e. that in spite of the marked absence of the outward activity one is accustomed to observe in other living beings which possess the faculty of perception, like animals and men, plants too nevertheless do have internal consciousness. It should not also be forgotten that plants do not have the sense organs by which men and higher animals gather information about the external world so that they are e. g. able to flee from their enemies. The assurance that plants are nevertheless antahsamina is quite meaningful in this regard, too.
However, unlike the expression antahprajña of the Māṇdūkyopanisad, the term antaḥsamjña would not then stand in an implicit opposition to a *bahiḥsamiña, formed in analogy with bahihprajña of the Upanisad, but the opposition would be that stated most clearely by Kullūka (see $ 2.4 above), viz. thus: bahirvyāpārādikāryavirahāt tathā vyupadiśyante.
Hence one will consider the possibility - which perhaps Haradatta (cf. 2.2 above ) had in view — that samjna is used in the term antaḥsamjña as a synecdoche, meaning — not “cognition" or "consciousness", but — their effect( s). This interpretation, of course, implies the idea that plants, too, react in principle just as animals, etc., to sensory stimuli, but that these reactions are not observable externally. The term would in this case be meant to explain the absence of what Kullūka aptly calls bahirvyāpāra in plants, and thus stand
55. This is the English translation of the meaning as given in the Shortor Petrograd Dictionary.