________________
SENSATION AND PERCEPTION
nary stage is nothing but sensation.3 The difficulty in this position is that apprehension is indeterminate and it is improper to consider it as a category of comprehension which is determinate.1
The contradiction involved in considering apprehension itself as sensation is got over by distinguishing three stages through which perception proper is arrived at. The first stage is that of apprehension, the second is that of sensation and the third is that of comprehension. Sensation, according to this view is a stage preceding perception, no doubt, but one which follows apprehension. The idea is expressed in different ways by the different Jaina philosophers, representing this school of thought.
Pūjyapāda says: "On the contact of the object and the sense organs, there occurs apprehension. The cognition of the object thereafter is sensation, as for example the cognition 'this is white colour' (by the visual organ)."5 It is clearly implied that sensation is different from apprehension or darśana. Akalanka makes a similar distinction. He maintains: "Sensation is a determinate cognition of the distinctive nature of an object following the apprehension of pure existence emerging just after the contact of a sense organ with its object."6 Similarly Vidyananda defines sensation as "the cognition of the specific characters of an object that follows the apprehension of the object in general born of the contact of the sense organ with it." These philosophers thus maintain that the first stage in the complex process of perception is apprehension in which there is mere awareness which is the immediate result of the sense-object contact. In the second stage of sensation, there is some cognition of the specific characteristics of the object. In the third stage, the perception stage (comprehension stage) there is also the 'identification' of the object, for example, as belonging to a particular class, etc. Sensation is thus logically considered to be a category of comprehension, both being conceived of as determinate in
nature.
95
The distinction between apprehension and comprehension and the inclusion of sensation in comprehension is referred to by Vadi
3 See Sanmatitarkaprakaraṇa, II. 21
4 See M.L. Mehta, Jaina Psychology, p. 74
5 Sarvärthasiddhi, I. 15
6 See M.L. Mehta, Jaina Psychology, p. 75
7 Tattvärtha-śloka-vārttika, I. 15. 2
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
