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thought. Not that to prove this was a mean performance, for thus to distinguish between sensory experience and thought was in a way the high water-mark of the Buddhist's speculation on logical problems; certainly, the distinction is not only very important but is also drawn very correctly. The difficulty rather is with the insinuation-nay, open declaration---that sensory experience has to do with something that is real, thought to do with something that is unreal. So, using the standard terminology of Indian logic it was proclaimed that pratyakṣa (=bare sensory experience) is pramaņa (valid cognition), kalpana (thought) is no pramana. His old question as to why kalpana is no pramana Jayanta repeats, this time claborating it abit; thus he says: May be kalpana is of two sorts-one that is of the form of building castle in the air, the other that grasps a present object like a blue patch. Nobody cares if the former is said to be no pramaņa, but why should the latter be no pramana when it does not arise except in the presence of the object concerned?' The query is very pertinent not only because a thought might possibly be true of its object, but because the question of being true or otherwise arises only in the case of a thought, not in the case of a bare sensory experience. On the other hand, the Buddhist's position is that a bare sensory experience is all pramāṇa, a thought is no pramaņa even when true. So, let us see how he answers Jayanta's present question; thus he argues: Really no thought whatsoever has anything to do with things real which are cognised in all fullness by nirvikalpaka cognition. The point is that a thing has but one nature and when this nature has been grasped by perception there remains nothing to be done by another pramana. As for the circumstance that in certain cases a thought appears to be grasping things real and to be lucid in character, that is because this thought arises in the wake of a nirvikalpaka cognition and so gets coloured by this cognition, not because this thought really grasps things real which in fact are grasped by a nirvikalpaka cognition alone." This again is a crucial pronouncement of the Buddhist, and again a highly misconceived pronouncement. For to cognise a thing means to identify it on the basis of its observed sensory features and in this sense a bare sensory experience is not at all a case of cognising a thing (though certainly an indispensable starting-point for cognising a thing) while a thought alone is a case of cognising a thing (though on the basis of features observed in the course of the preceding sensory experience). And here the Buddhist is saying something just the opposiic. Thus on his showing bare sensory experience not only cognises a thing but cognises it in all fullness so that nothing remains to be cognised by the forthcoming thought; hence even while distinguishing between a thought arising in a baseless fashion and one arising in the wake of a sensory experience with a view to identifying the object concerned he would not
