Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

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

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VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETION NO. I
namely, perception (pratyakşa), inference (anumana), comparison (upamāna) and verbal testimony (sabda). The recognition of the validity of reasoning on the basis of its efficacy for the comprehension of universal concomitance (vyāpti) would necessitate the admission of an additional species which militates against the categorical statement in the Nyayasutra. This is an intricate problem and it has been discussed threadbare by Dr. S. Bagchi in his momentous work Inductive Reasoning. It will suffice for our purpose to observe that the knowledge of universal concomitance cannot be delivered by perception which is necessarily confined to the present data distinct from past and future instances. Nor can it be apprehended by inference because inference is possible on the basis of universal concomitance set forth in the major premiss of Aristotelian syllogism and the third member of the Nyāya syllogism called illustration (udāharana). If inference were competent to deliver this knowledge it would presuppose another necessary concomitance and if another inference is requisitioned to account for the second concomitance, the result would be an infinite regress. So inductive reasoning (üha) must be recognized as a valid cognition in spite of its hypothetical character. In fact it is not hypothetical as has been shown by Dr. Bagchi, in his exposition of the Madhva position. It is asserted that the formal hypothetical proposition 'If there were no fire there would be no smoke' means that the admission of absence of fire necessarily entails the admission of absence of smoke. And as the smoke in the hill is perceived as a present fact, its absence, though not objective, which is inevitably entailed by the admission of the absence of fire is not a hypothetical assumption. It is highly creditable on the part of the Jaina logician that he boldly asserted the validity of inductive reasoning (üha or tarka) as an independent separate species.
The assertion of Siddhasena that valid cognition falls under two heads, perceptual and extra-perceptual, is comprehensive of all species of valid knowledge. Siddhasena does not agree with the Buddhist logician in his assertion of perception and inference as the only two species. It has been shown that there are other varieties of extraperceptual cognition, the validity of which is not liable to denial. Verbal testimony and the like though extra-perceptual cannot be included under inference. If inference is broadly understood as a species of knowledge which derives its possibility from the impossibility of the opposite of the fact to be proved, verbal testimony and other types of extra-perceptual cognition which are also necessarily concomitant with their respective referents and impossible in the absence of the