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OTHER SOURCES OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE
The Naiyayikas say that it is not a presentative knowledge (anubhava). It is only the representation of what was once presented. The object as remembered is different from the object as presented, since the object as presented before, has ceased to exist. The Mimamsakas also do not regard recollection (smrti), as a pramaņa, since it gives us knowledge of things only previously experienced; it does not give any new knowledge, but only a revival of the same old knowledge. The validity of remembered knowledge depends on the validity of the previously experienced knowledge.
But the Jainas say that, while memory is conditioned by the revival of impressions of past experiences, its essence lies in the knowledge of something as 'that' in the past (tadityākāra). It is the knowledge of what was previously experienced as past. Memory is, in the language of L. T. Hobhouse, assertion of the past as past. That memory refers to a previously experienced object, or that it is an assertion of the past, is known by memory itself. The Jainas say that knowledge of the past given by recollection is valid, like perception, because it leads to successful activity. They also give the criterion for establishing the validity of recollection. If recollection were not valid, inference based on vyapti, the universal relation between the major term and the middle term, would become invalid. Hemacandra points out that recollection refers to an object that has once been experienced, and the reality of the object and not its actually felt presence is the condition of validity for a cognition. If it is contended that the object must be felt as present, as in perception, in order to get valid cognition, we may equally say that perception is also invalid as it is found to lack the criterion of referring to a fact that has been experienced in the past. If revelation of the relevant object be a criterion of validity, it is found to be equally present in the case of memory.
Again, it has been objected that it would be difficult to understand how an object which is deficient can be a generating condition of recollection. But the Jainas say that this objection is also not valid. Cognition reveals its object when it is brought into being by the requisite condition of the operation of the sense organs and mind and the destruction and subsidence of the knowledge-obscuring karmas, just as light which comes into being on the operation of its own conditions reveals objects, like the jar, though not generated by those conditions. Similarly, if recollection is said to be invalid, one must give up inference also, since inference is not possible without recollection of the necessary concomitance.20
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Some Vaiseṣika writers also contend that smrti (recollection), is a valid source of knowledge. They recognize both smrti and presentative
20 Pramanamimāṁsā, I, 1-3 and Commentary.
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