A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 by Surendranath Dasgupta (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

are all passing and momentary, yet so long as the series continues to be the same, as in the case of one person, say Devadatta, the phenomena of memory, recognition, etc. can happen in the succeeding moments, for these are evidently illusory cognitions, so far as they refer to the permanence of the objects

412

believed to have been perceived before, for things or knowledge-moments, whatever they may be, are destroyed the next moment after their birth. There is no permanent entity as perceiver or knower, but the knowledge-moments are at once the knowledge, the knower and the known. This thoroughgoing idealism brushes off all references to an objective field of experience, interprets the verdict of knowledge as involving a knower and the known as mere illusory appearance, and considers the flow of knowledge as a self-determining series in successive objective forms as the only truth. The Hindu schools of thought, Nyâya, Sâ@mkhya, and the Mîmâ@msâ, accept the duality of soul and matter, and attempt to explain the relation between the two. With the Hindu writers it was not the practical utility of knowledge that was the only important thing, but the nature of knowledge and the manner in which it came into being were also enquired after and considered important.

Pramâ@na is defined by Nyâya as the collocation of instruments by which unerring and indubitable knowledge comes into being. The collocation of instruments which brings about definite knowledge consists partly of consciousness (bodha) and partly of material factors (bodhâbodhasvabhâva). Thus in perception the proper contact of the visual sense with the object (e.g. jug) first brings about a non-intelligent, non-apprehensible indeterminate consciousness (nirvikalpa) as the jugness (gha@tatva) and this later on combining with the remaining other collocations of sense-contact etc. produces the determinate consciousness: this is a jug. The existence of this indeterminate state of consciousness as a factor in bringing about the determinate consciousness, cannot of course be perceived, but its existence can be inferred from the fact that if the perceiver were not already in possession of the qualifying factor (vis'e@sanajñâna as jugness) he could not have comprehended the qualified object (vis'i@s@tabuddhi} the jug (i.e. the object which possesses jugness). In inference (anumâ@na) knowledge of the li@nga takes part, and in upamâna the sight of similarity with other material conglomerations. In the case of the Buddhists knowledge itself was regarded as pramâ@na; even by those who admitted the existence of the objective world, right knowledge was called pramâ@na, because it was of the same form as the external objects it represented, and it was by the form of the knowledge (e.g. blue) that we could apprehend that the

413

external object was also blue. Knowledge does not determine the external world but simply enforces our convictions about the external world. So far as knowledge leads us to form our convictions of the external world it is pramâ@na, and so far as it determines our attitude towards the external world it is pramâ@naphala. The question how knowledge is generated had little importance with them, but how with knowledge we could form convictions of the external world was the most important thing. Knowledge was called pramâ@na, because it was the means by which we could form convictions (adhyavasâya) about the external world. Nyâya sought to answer the question how knowledge was generated in us, but could not understand that knowledge was not a mere phenomenon like any other objective phenomenon, but thought that though as a gu@na (quality) it was external like other gu@nas, yet it was associated with our self as a result of collocations like any other happening in the material world. Pramâ@na does not necessarily bring to us new knowledge (anadhigatâdhi-gant@r) as the Buddhists demanded, but whensoever there were collocations of pramâ@na, knowledge was produced, no matter whether the object was previously unknown or known. Even the knowledge of known things may be repeated if there be suitable collocations. Knowledge like any other physical effect is produced whenever the cause of it namely the pramâ@na collocation is present. Categories which are merely mental such as class (sâmânya), inherence (samavâya), etc., were considered as having as much independent existence as the atoms of the four elements. The phenomenon of the rise of knowledge in the soul was thus conceived to be as much a phenomenon as the turning of the colour of the jug by fire from black to red. The element of indeterminate consciousness was believed to be combining with the sense contact, the object, etc. to produce the determinate consciousness. There was no other subtler form of movement than the molecular. Such a movement brought about by a certain collocation of things ended in a certain result (phala). Jñâna (knowledge) was thus the result of certain united collocations (sâmagrî) and their movements (e.g. contact of manas with soul, of manas with the senses, of the senses with the object, etc.). This confusion renders it impossible to understand the real philosophical distinction between knowledge and an external event of the objective world. Nyâya thus fails to explain the cause

414

of the origin of knowledge, and its true relations with the objective world. Pleasure, pain, willing, etc. were regarded as qualities which belonged to the soul, and the soul itself was regarded as a qualitiless entity which could not be apprehended directly but was inferred as that in which the qualities of jñâna, sukha (pleasure), etc. inhered. Qualities had independent existence as much as substances, but when any new substances were produced, the qualities rushed forward and inhered in them. It is very probable that in Nyâya the cultivation of the art of inference was originally pre-eminent and metaphysics was deduced later by an application of the inferential method which gave the introspective method but little scope for its application, so that inference came in to explain even perception (e.g. this is a jug since it has jugness) and the testimony of personal psychological experience was taken only as a supplement to corroborate the results arrived at by inference and was not used to criticize it [Footnote ref 1].

Sâ@mkhya understood the difference between knowledge and material events. But so far as knowledge consisted in being the copy of external things, it could not be absolutely different from the objects themselves; it was even then an invisible translucent sort of thing, devoid of weight and grossness such as the external objects possessed. But the fact that it copies those gross objects makes it evident that knowledge had essentially the same substances though in a subtler form as that of which the objects were made. But though the matter of knowledge, which assumed the form of the objects with which it came in touch, was probably thus a subtler combination of the same elementary substances of which matter was made up, yet there was in it another element, viz. intelligence, which at once distinguished it as utterly different from material combinations. This element of intelligence is indeed different from the substances or content of the knowledge itself, for the element of intelligence is like a stationary light, "the self," which illuminates the crowding, bustling knowledge which is incessantly changing its form in accordance with the objects with which it comes in touch. This light of intelligence is the same that finds its manifestation in consciousness as the "I," the changeless entity amidst all the fluctuations of the changeful procession of knowledge. How this element of light which is foreign to the substance of knowledge

____________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: See Nyâyamañjarî on pramâ@na.]

415

relates itself to knowledge, and how knowledge itself takes it up into itself and appears as conscious, is the most difficult point of the Sâ@mkhya epistemology and metaphysics. The substance of knowledge copies the external world, and this copy-shape of knowledge is again intelligized by the pure intelligence (puru@sa) when it appears as conscious. The forming of the buddhi-shape of knowledge is thus the pramâ@na (instrument and process of knowledge) and the validity or invalidity of any of these shapes is criticized by the later shapes of knowledge and not by the external objects (svata@h-prâmâ@nya and svata@h-aprâmâ@nya). The pramâ@na however can lead to a pramâ or right knowledge only when it is intelligized by the puru@sa. The puru@sa comes in touch with buddhi not by the ordinary means of physical contact but by what may be called an inexplicable transcendental contact. It is the transcendental influence of puru@sa that sets in motion the original prak@rti in Sâ@mkhya metaphysics, and it is the same transcendent touch (call it yogyatâ according to Vâcaspati or samyoga according to Bhik@su) of the transcendent entity of puru@sa that transforms the non-intelligent states of buddhi into consciousness. The Vijñânavâdin Buddhist did not make any distinction between the pure consciousness and its forms (âkâra) and did not therefore agree that the âkâra of knowledge was due to its copying the objects. Sâ@mkhya was however a realist who admitted the external world and regarded the forms as all due to copying, all stamped as such upon a translucent substance (sattva) which could assume the shape of the objects. But Sâ@mkhya was also transcendentalist in this, that it did not think like Nyâya that the âkâra of knowledge was all that knowledge had to show; it held that there was a transcendent element which shone forth in knowledge and made it conscious. With Nyâya there was no distinction between the shaped buddhi and the intelligence, and that being so consciousness was almost like a physical event. With Sâ@mkhya however so far as the content and the shape manifested in consciousness were concerned it was indeed a physical event, but so far as the pure intelligizing element of consciousness was concerned it was a wholly transcendent affair beyond the scope and province of physics. The rise of consciousness was thus at once both transcendent and physical.

The Mîmâ@msist Prabhâkara agreed with Nyâya in general as regards the way in which the objective world and sense contact

416

induced knowledge in us. But it regarded knowledge as a unique phenomenon which at once revealed itself, the knower and the known. We are not concerned with physical collocations, for whatever these may be it is knowledge which reveals things—the direct apprehension that should be called the pramâ@na. Pramâ@na in this sense is the same as pramiti or pramâ, the phenomenon of apprehension. Pramâ@na may also indeed mean the collocations so far as they induce the pramâ. For pramâ or right knowledge is never produced, it always exists, but it manifests itself differently under different circumstances. The validity of knowledge means the conviction or the specific attitude that is generated in us with reference to the objective world. This validity is manifested with the rise of knowledge, and it does not await the verdict of any later experience in the objective field (sa@mvâdin). Knowledge as nirvikalpa (indeterminate) means the whole knowledge of the object and not merely a non-sensible hypothetical indeterminate class-notion as Nyâya holds. The savikalpa (determinate) knowledge only re-establishes the knowledge thus formed by relating it with other objects as represented by memory [Footnote ref 1].

Prabhâkara rejected the Sâ@mkhya conception of a dual element in consciousness as involving a transcendent intelligence (cit) and a material part, the buddhi; but it regarded consciousness as an unique thing which by itself in one flash represented both the knower and the known. The validity of knowledge did not depend upon its faithfulness in reproducing or indicating (pradars'akatva) external objects, but upon the force that all direct apprehension (anubhûti) has of prompting us to action in the external world; knowledge is thus a complete and independent unit in all its self-revealing aspects. But what the knowledge was in itself apart from its self-revealing character Prabhâkara did not enquire.

Kumârila declared that jñâna (knowledge) was a movement brought about by the activity of the self which resulted in producing consciousness (jñâtatâ) of objective things. Jñâna itself cannot be perceived, but can only be inferred as the movement necessary for producing the jñâtatâ or consciousness of things. Movement with Kumârila was not a mere atomic vibration, but was a non-sensuous transcendent operation of which vibration

__________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Sâ@mkhya considered nirvikalpa as the dim knowledge of the first moment of consciousness, which, when it became clear at the next moment, was called savikalpa.]

417

was sometimes the result. Jñâna was a movement and not the result of causal operation as Nyâya supposed. Nyâya would not also admit any movement on the part of the self, but it would hold that when the self is possessed of certain qualities, such as desire, etc., it becomes an instrument for the accomplishment of a physical movement. Kumârila accords the same self-validity to knowledge that Prabhâkara gives. Later knowledge by experience is not endowed with any special quality which should decide as to the validity of the knowledge of the previous movement. For what is called sa@mvâdi or later testimony of experience is but later knowledge and nothing more [Footnote ref 1]. The self is not revealed in the knowledge of external objects, but we can know it by a mental perception of self-consciousness. It is the movement of this self in presence of certain collocating circumstances leading to cognition of things that