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262 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY his nature by continuous self-discipline and has succeeded in developing yogic power. Hence their perception is stated to be of the alaukika kind-the third of the varieties mentioned above. When we say that morality as conceived here is obedience to an inner law, we mean the intuitive judgments of such 'seers' who alone can speak with the voice of the true self. To the average man, who is still under the sway of particular desires and passions, the standard remains external inasmuch as his knowledge of dharma, to confine ourselves to only one of the two notions we are considering, is acquired through another and is second-hand. Strangely enough the doctrine in its present form accepts the authority of the Veda also in this respect as shown by its adoption of the whole of the karma discipline as taught in it, and the need for two pramānas is justified on the supposition that dharma can be intuited only after it is known from the Veda.. But if we remember that when once dharma is known, the most important thing to do is to strive not for acquiring an immediate or direct knowledge of it, but for realizing it in action, it becomes clear that one of the two pramānas is superfluous. And it is the Veda that is so, if we may judge from the general tenor of the doctrine and the repudiation of verbal testimony as an independent pramāņa in the Vaiseșika part of it.
So far as the preliminary discipline is concerned, we can trace the influence of the Gitā teaching as early as Prasastapāda,3 but the training really appropriate to the NyayaVaiseșika and originally recommended in it is akin to what we have noted in connection with the heretical schools in an earlier chapter (p. 113). Its object, however, is the same as that of karma-yoga, viz, sattvasuddhi or 'cleansing of the heart,' as is clear from Vätsyāyana's reference to it as atmasaṁskāra or 'self-purification, and is to be achieved by eliminating narrow love (rāga) and hate (dveşa). Only the course of conduct laid down here is not disinterested activity in the Gitā sense but the practice of yama and niyama.4 There is some uncertainty regarding the original connotation 1 PB. pp. 7 and 272-3.
· NM. p. 108. 3 See p. 281. Cf. TSD. p. 67. NS. IV. ii. 46; PB. Pp. 273, 280 ff.
