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VISISTĀDVAITA
391 sandy waste which contains not only prthivi, the preponderating part of it, but also ap and the other elements however slight; and the apprehension of water there, we have to understand, is therefore only of what is actually presented to the eye. But such an explanation may do only in cases where the object of illusion, as in the example given, is one or other of the five bhūtas. Illusions, however, are by no means confined to such rare cases. We may mistake shell for silver where neither is itself a bhūta. To explain such cases, Rāmānuja resorts to an extension of the principle underlying panci-karana. The illusion of shell-silver is due, among other causes, to the similarity between the two things, viz. their peculiar lustre. This similarity means to Rāmānuja the presence in the shell, though only to an extremely limited extent, of the very substance which constitutes silver. Likeness is to him another term for partial identity of material, and so what is perceived even here is what is actually, presented. That is, Rāmānuja justifies his view of sat-khyāti in such cases by pointing to what is a fundamental tenet of his system, viz. the unity of the physical world and the structural affinity that is discoverable among the things that belong to it.
(2) In other cases like the white conch seen yellow by a person with a jaundiced eye a different explanation becomes necessary, for as the yellowness is admitted by all to be there outside the knowing self, viz. in the eye-ball, the point requiring elucidation is not whether it is real but how it comes to be seen as characterizing the conch. The explanation of Rāmānuja, which is based upon the theory of vision current at the time, assumes that the yellowness found in the diseased eye-ball is actually transmitted from there to the conch along with the 'rays of the organ of sight (nāyanarasmi) as they travel to it in the process of seeing and that the new colour thus imposed upon the conch obscures the whiteness natural to it. The conch is accordingly supposed to become actually yellow, though only for the time being. Here also then knowledge is of what is given in respect not only of the relata but also of the relation between them. To 1 Tadeva sadssam tasya yat taddravyaika-desa-bhāk: SB. p. 184.
