Book Title: Satapatha Bramhana Part 05
Author(s): Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 1322
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114
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
an essentially clear and distinct nature.' Does this nature then exist previously (to the cessation of indistinctness), or not? If it does, there is no room whatever either for indistinctness the effect of avidyâ, or for its cessation. If it does not previously exist, then Release discloses itself as something to be effected, and therefore non-eternal.And that such non-knowledge is impossible because there is no definable substrate for it we have shown above. -He, moreover, who holds the theory of error resting on a non-real defect, will find it difficult to prove the impossibility of error being without any substrate ; for, if the cause of error may be unreal, error may be supposed to take place even in case of its substrate being unreal. And the consequence of this would be the theory of a general Void.
The assertion, again, that non-knowledge as a positive entity is proved by Inference, also is groundless. But the inference was actually set forth — True; but it was set forth badly. For the reason you employed for proving agñana is a so-called contradictory one (i. e. it proves the contrary of what it is meant to prove), in so far as it proves what is not desired and what is different from ag ñana (for what it proves is that there is a certain knowledge, viz. that all knowledge resting on valid means of proof has non-knowledge for its antecedent). (And with regard to this knowledge again we must ask whether it also has nonknowledge for its antecedent.) If the reason (relied on in all this argumentation) does not prove, in this case also, the antecedent existence of positive non-knowledge, it is too general (and hence not to be trusted in any case). If, on the other hand, it does prove antecedent nonknowledge, then this latter non-knowledge stands in the way of the non-knowledge (which you try to prove by inference) being an object of consciousness, and thus the whole supposition of agñana as an entity becomes useless.
The proving instance, moreover, adduced by our opponent, has no proving power; for the light of a lamp does not possess the property of illumining things not illumined
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