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I ADHYAYA, 1 PÂDA, 1.
In cases of Scripture conflicting with Perception, Sorip
tare is not stronger. The True cannot be known through the Untrue. With reference to the assertion (p. 24 ff.) that Perception, which depends on the view of plurality, is based on some defect and hence admits of being otherwise accounted for -whence it follows that it is sublated by Scripture ; we ask you to point out what defect it is on which Perception is based and may hence be accounted for otherwise. --The beginningless imagination of difference' we expect you to reply.-But, we ask in retum, have you then come to know by some other means that this beginningless imagination of difference, acting in a manner analogous to that of certain defects of vision, is really the cause of an altogether perverse view of things ?- If you reply that this is known just from the fact that Perception is in conflict with Scripture, we point out that you are reasoning in a circle: you prove the defectiveness of the imagination of plurality through the fact that Scripture tells us about a substance devoid of all difference; and at the same time you prove the latter point through the former. Moreover, if Perception gives rise to perverse cognition because it is based on the imagination of plurality, Scripture also is in no better case-for it is based on the very same view.-If against this you urge that Scripture, although based on a defect, yet sublates Perception in so far as it is the cause of a cognition which dispels all plurality apprehended through Perception, and thus is later in order than Perception; we rejoin that the defectiveness of the foundation of Scripture having once been recognised, the circumstance of its being later is of no avail. For if a man is afraid of a rope which he mistakes for a snake his fear does not come to an end because another man, whom he considers to be in error himself, tells him. This is no snake, do not be afraid. And that Scripture is founded on something defective is known at the very time of hearing Scripture, for the reflection (which follows on hearing) consists in repeated attempts to cognise the oneness of Brahman -a cognition which is destructive of all the plurality appre
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