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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
cognition (smrtyānubhava), as a form of valid knowledge. Smrti arises out of impressions of past experience, and it is the knowledge of the individual object 'as that', as something previously experienced, like that bathing ghat' and 'that city of Banaras'.
Vallabhācārya also maintains that smrti is a separate pramāņa, because it gives true knowledge of certain facts. Although it depends on previous experiences, it cannot be said to be merely a repetition of some previous experience. It is something more. It gives the experience of the past experience as past. Awareness of its being past is not a part of previous experience; and memory gives us the knowledge of this new element.
Among the Western philosophers, Russell, Hobhouse and others recognize memory as a primary source of knowledge. Memory gives us direct knowledge of the past. Russell says that immediate knowledge by memory is the source of all other knowledge concerning the past; without it, there would be no knowledge of the past by inference, since we should never know that there was anything past to be inferred.21 He says that memory resembles perception in point of immediacy and differs from it mainly in its being referred to the past. Hobhouse shows that memory is neither retention of past experience nor a mere image of past experience, but an assertion of it as past on the basis of such retention and images.22 Ewing also thinks that the view of memory as a direct experience is clearly true if we have any knowledge of the past at all. If we know the past, it is the past we know and not the present ideas of the past.23 It is a mistake to suppose, as the Naiyāyikas did, that we are directly aware of the past, that the past must be, so to speak, bodily present to our mind or occupy the same position as present objects of perception.
Thus smrti, or recollection, is considered by the Jainas as valid cognition and a separate source of knowledge. In fact, even inference involves memory, because it cannot take place without the recollection of the universal relation between the major term and the middle term.
The validity of recollection as cognition is an epistemological problem, although it has a psychological significance. Recall is a revival of past experience. It has past experience as its basis. But we must remember that perception is one kind of mental event, while recall is a different kind of mental event. It is cognitive in nature and an independent source of knowledge. Drever says that a percept is an event and memory of it a new event. The Jaina analysis of recollection is mainly epistemological, although it expresses the psychological factors
21 Russell (B.): Problems of Philosophy, p. 75. 22 Chatterjee (S. C.): The Nyāya Theory of Knowledge, Ch. IV. 23 Mind, April 1930, p. 142.
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