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THE JAINA THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION
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as the stage of ascertainment of right and exclusion of wrong.83 For instance, on hearing a sound, a person determines that this sound must be of a conch and not of a horn, since it is sweet and not harsh. Harshness is the quality of the sound of a horn. This type of ascertainment of the existing specific feature of the object is called avāya. It is perceptual judgment. It is expressed in the form of a judgment, as 'this is a sound of a conch', or 'this is a red rose.'
Some Jaina logicians say that avāya has only a negative function. In this stage of experience there is merely the exclusion of non-existing qualities. They ascribe cognition of the existing quality to a later stage of experience called dhāranā. Jinabhadra says that such a view is not correct. He says that, whether a cognition merely does the negative function of excluding the non-existing qualities, or also does the determination of the existing characteristics, or whether it does both, it is still avāya (perceptual judgment).84 Umāsvāti seems to hold the view mentioned by Jinabhadra. Pūjayapāda says that avāya cognizes the specific features of the object. Therefore, it is determinate cognition. Akalanka holds a similar view. Vādi-Deva describes avāya as a determination of specific features of the object cognized in the stage of ihā.85 Hemacandra holds a similar view. He says that avāya is the final determination of the specific nature of the object cognized by īhā. Avāya has been described in this treatise as perceptual judgment.
Avāya may be compared to the apperception involved in perceptual experience. Perception is a complex experience. The older psychologists analysed perception as involving apperception. Apperception is assimilation of new experiences to old. It is involved in all distinct perceptions, and usually in all attentive perceptions. When we hear the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs, we are only aware through the sense organ of hearing of a sound of a certain type. But that sound is of a particular person who is coming up the stairs, is interpretation based on our previous experience. We then get the experience that we hear the footsteps of a person coming up the stairs. In this stage, what is fragmentary in our experience is supplemented and expanded, and fitted into a system to form a completed picture.
Dhāranā (Retention)
Now we come to the stage of retention, dhāraṇā, in perceptual experience. Nandisūtra defines retention as the act of retaining a perceptual judgment for a number of instants or innumerable instants. It gives sthāpana and pratisthā as synonyms of dhāranā.86 Umāsvāti
83 Tattvärthasūtrabhāsya, 115. 84 Visegāvasyakabhāsya, 187. 85 Pramānanayatattvalokālan kära, II. 9. 86 Nandisutra, 35.
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