Book Title: Sambodhi 1989 Vol 16
Author(s): Ramesh S Betai, Yajneshwar S Shastri
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Page 213
________________ 10 Jayanta does not draw the correct conclusion that nirvikalpaka perception is not at all a case of cognition but a misleading conclusion that whatever is cognised by savikalpaka perception is also cognised by nirvikalpaka perception. And then he in essence argues that since a savikalpaka perception does not cognise a unique particular, the grand universal, Beingas-such, speech or the comingled mass of qualities, actions etc. the hypothesis that any of these things is cognised by nirvikalpaka perception is false. Of the several hypotheses in question, the last alone receives a somewhat sympathetic consideration at the hands of Jayanta, for the rest are simply so many illusionist hypotheses current in his times while he was an uncompromising opponent of all illusionism. Thus the advocates of these hypotheses appealed to the authority of nirvikalpaka perception and dismissed as a vikalpa-born illusion the world of our day-to-day experience; (we have already some idea of how that was done by the Buddhist and the procedure was essentially similar with his comrades-in-arms). As directed against these hypotheses Jayanta's present argument has the important meaning that what is revealed in savikalpaka perception is not an illusion but a verity; but for reasons we have already noted he was prevented from further arguing that nirvikalpaka perception is not at all a case of cognition. As for the last hypothesis it was a Kumāralite position as much opposed to illusionisin as Jayanta's own position. So, against it Jayanta raised a relatively secondary objection. Thus the Kumärilite maintained that qualities, actions, class-characters etc. exhibited by a thing are some how identical with this thing though also somehow different from it; on the other hand, Jayanta maintained that these qualities etc. are absoultely different from this thing, so that if the Kumārilite agrees with him on this point the two will have nothing to differ on the question of nirvikalpakasavikalpaka."It is in this background that Jayanta concludes his present enquiry by emphasising that whatever is cognised by savikalpaka perception is also cognised by nirvikalpaka perception; and since it is his understanding that all sorts of independent reals in the form of substances, qualities, actions, class-character etc. are cognised by savikalpaka perception he contends that the same are cognised by nirvikaldaka perception as well.96 But this time Jayanta clarifies his position by further noting that even if the same set of entities are cognised by nirvikalpaka perception and savikalpaka perception, the latter does and the former does not involve an cmployment of words. 97 However, on the question as to how an employment of words is involved in savikalpaka perception, there was a lot of confusion in the Nyāya campos As was noted in the beginning, the Buddhist definition of perception contained two elements in the form of saying that perception is devoid of

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