Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

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VAT VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
condition of determinate perception, the former should be regarded as a remote antecedent like sense-object-contact. It has been contended that determinate perception only reproduces the content of the indeterminate intuition and as such has no independent status. But even if this contention be considered to be true, determinate perception and judgement, may be regarded as superfluo us. It is on the contrary productive of activity and at any rate of the certitude of the content. Without this certitude indeterminate intuition is of no value and is as good as non-existent. Furthermore, it is supposed that the indeterminate sense-intuition fully envisages the real with all its features. The momentariness, for instance, of the real is also cognized by it. But it generates the perceptual judgement in respect of a few specific traits and so momentariness is not judged. But does not this postulation of the indeterminate intuition of which there is no decisive perceptual evidence merely complicate the process ? Is it not a simpler explanation of the process to say that the object produces perception of a certain number of its traits in pursuance of the operation of the sense-organ, light, proximity and the like ? But it has been objected that these traits such as blueness, non-momentariness, circularity and the like are mutually incompatible in an indivisible unitary entity and so they are not regarded as real facts. But even on your supposition, indeterminate intuition is efficient only in respect of its blue-content and not its momentariness. Furthermore the intuition is held to be a case of consciousness indeterminate, unerroneous and the like. So these different attributes namely efficiency and inefficiency, blueness, indeterminacy and unerroneousness should militate against the simplicity and unity of the Tf these different attributes or traits can belong to sense-intuition without jeopardizing its integrity, they should not be regarded as incompatible associates in the external object also. It must b then that so far as our perceptual cognition is concerned it does not prove that things are only a series of momentary atoms. The plain deliverance of perception must not be distorted by sophistical arguments. Even in the case of er roneous cognitions they are not entirely erroneous, and authentic cognitions are also not entirely authentic. We see only the front part and not the inside of an object. The percep. tion of a false thing, say of snake in a rope, is not false in respect of its own self. That it is a cognition in spite of the falsity of its content is obvious. The perception of double moon is false but it is authentic in regard to the whiteness and its location in the sky.
We have examined the Sautrāntika theory of perception which has been employed as a'n argument by the Negativist. The Sanyavādin