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Means of Valid Cognition Other Than Verbal Testimony
contact, but in the course of commenting upon this very declaration the later authors raised the question as to what constitutes the means of valid cognition in the case of the perceptual type of valid cognition. As a general rule, these authors posited various successive steps which are supposed to be taken in the course of acquiring perceptual cognition and it was given out that an earlier step acts as 'means in relation to its immediate successor. Thus according to them, sense-object contact was 'means' in relation to indegiminate perception, indeterminate perception 'means in relation to determinate perception, determinate perception 'means' in relation to the memory of a past experience related to the object concerned, memory 'means' in relation to the act now being undertaken in relation to the object. Besides, it was understood that senise-object contact is accompanied by the contact of manas with the sense-organ concerned and that of soul with manas, sometimes it too was given out that this or that from among these contacts acts as 'means' in relation to perceptual cognition, sometimes that the three together do so; sometimes the sense-organ concerned was by itself given out to be the means' of perceptual cognition. A new turn altogether was given to the discussion by the Buddhists who argued that nothing lying outside a piece of cognition can act as 'means' in relation to it; so on their showing a piece of cognition itself is a 'means' insofar as it bears the same form as the object con. cerned while it is a 'resultant' insofar as it is of the form of the apprehension of this object. The Buddhists thought that the merit of their position lay in that according to it the 'means and the resultant' have to do with one and the samethin their fear being that this would not be the case if the means is something that precedes the 'resultant'. The Buddhists were divided into two parties, some being realists and positing the reality of physical objects, the others being idealists and denying the reality of physical objects; both had their own ideas on the topic under consideration. Kumärila had closely studied the Nyāya and Buddhist positions on the question of 'means' and 'resultant' and what he actually dces is to quote with approval the Nyāya position (vv. 59.-73) and to offer critical observations against the Buddhist position (yv. 74-82). But before doing these two things he indulges in an independent piece of speculation which is interesting because of its some affinity with the Buddhist line of thinking (vv. 53-56). Thus the author of Mimämsāsūtra had declared that birth of cognition taking place in the wake of a contact (of the objects) with the sense-organs is perception. This was a simple description of perceptual cognition but Kumärila reads into it a clarification relating to the problem of 'means' and 'resultant. For on his showing the aphorist has spoken of birth of cognition' in order to make it clear that cognition is unlike other instruments inasmuch as it undertakes its appropriate operation in the very process of being born-----thus eg. being unlike a sense-organ which first comes into existence and then undertakes an operation with a view to bringing about perceptiual cognition. But granting that cognition is an instrument the question arises, as to what constitutes its operation and what its 'resultant'. To this question Kumārila's answer amounts to admiting
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