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VISISTĀDVAITA
387 simple to the complex as in the Nyāya-Vaiseşika; rather the complex itself, hitherto new, ceases to be so and becomes familiar through it. To put the same in another way, while according to the Nyāya-Vaiseșika only the savikalpaka involves judgment, the nirvikalpaka merely furnishing the material for it, according to the Visiştādvaita all perceptual experience alike involves it. The savikalpaka does not thereby become the same as recognition (pratyabhijñā): 'This is that Devadatta,' for the latter refers to one and the same object as perceived twice whereas the former arises when different objects of the same type are cognized. In both alike, no doubt, a present object is associated with the revival of a past impression: but while in the savikalpaka it is only the impression of the attributive element that revives, in recognition that of the particular individual (vyakti) also does. Further, though all perception equally entails judgment, recognition includes a specific reference to the distinctions of time and place in which the object is cognized on the two occasions. It is not only at the primal stage of perception that the unqualified object (nirvišeşa-vastu) is not known; all jñāna, including that of the ultimate reality, is necessarily of an object as complex (saguna). This constitutes a radical difference from Sarkara, who represents the Upanişadic ultimate as nirguņa (p. 373). "If the Upanişads describe Brahman as without qualities, Rāmānuja says, 'all that the description can mean is that some qualities are denied while there are still others characterizing it.'
To know the nature of jñāna, according to Rāmānuja, it is necessary to understand the classification of ultimate objects which is peculiar to his doctrine. To the well-known distinction between spirit and matter which are respectively termed cetana and jada in Sanskrit, he adds another which is neither. Jñāna is of this intermediate type. It is unlike material entities in that it can unaided manifest itself and other objects neither of which is possible for them. But what it thus manifests is never for itself but always for another. That is, it can only show but cannot know. In this latter respect it is unlike spirit, which knows though it is unable, SB. PP. 70-5.
• SB. p. 71.
