________________
394 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Similarly in the case of the desert when we cognize it as such, our mind lets slip the element of ap supposed to be contained in it. The fact is that while sat-khyāti postulates that only what is given is known, it does not admit that all that is given is known. Knowledge, no doubt, is always of the given and of nothing but the given; but it need not be of the whole of what is given. It would not, therefore, be right to conclude that error in general is incomplete knowing. Since completeness like validity fails to differentiate truth from error, Rāmānuja enunciates a new principle, viz. that for knowledge to be true in its commonly accepted sense it should, in addition to agreeing with outside reality, be serviceable in life. When the mirage and the shell-silver are described as false, what we have to understand is not that water and silver are not present there, for in that case we could not have become conscious of them at all, but that they are not such as can be put to practical use. The distinction between truth and error comes thus to be significant only from the practical standpoint; from the theoretical one, it does not exist. All knowledge without exception is valid and necessarily so, but such validity need not guarantee that what is known is adequate to satisfy a practical need. A geologist may correctly adjudge a piece of ore as golden; but it does not mean that a bracelet (say) can be made out of the metal in it. This is the significance of the Visiştādvaitic definition of truth as not only yathārtha or 'agreeing with outside reality, but also vyavahārānuguna or 'adapted to the practical interests of life. If knowledge should conform to vyavahāra, it should satisfy two conditions. It must, in the first place, refer to objects of common or collective experience. It is deficiency in this respect that makes the yellow-conch and the dream-elephant false. Because their being private to a particular individual is overlooked at the time, they
The peculiar view upheld in sat-khyāti, however, makes one thing certain. There can be no errors of commission. Here is a point of agreement between Rămănuja's sat-khyāti and Prabhakara's akhyāti. The two are not, however, identical. Compare Vedānta Desika's description of the former as akhyāti-samvalita-yatharthakhyati in SAS. PP. 403-7.
1 Yatindra-mata-dipikā, p. 3.
