A History of Indian Philosophy Part 58

The mantras which are generally hymns in praise of some deities or powers are to be taken as being for the specification of the deity to whom the libation is to be offered. It should be remembered that as dharma can only be acquired by following the injunctions of the Vedas they should all be interpreted as giving us injunctions. Anything therefore found in the Vedas which cannot be connected with the injunctive orders as forming part of them is to be regarded as untrustworthy or at best inexpressive.

Thus it is that those sentences in the Vedas which describe existing things merely or praise some deed of injunction (called the _arthavadas_) should be interpreted as forming part of a vidhi-vakya (injunction) or be rejected altogether. Even those expressions which give reasons for the performance of certain actions are to be treated as mere arthavadas and interpreted as praising injunctions. For Vedas have value only as mandates by the performance of which dharma may be acquired.

When a sacrifice is performed according to the injunctions of the Vedas, a capacity which did not exist before and whose existence is proved by the authority of the scriptures is generated either in the action or in the agent. This capacity or positive force called _apurva_ produces in time the beneficent results of the sacrifice (e.g. leads the performer to Heaven). This apurva is like a potency or faculty in the agent which abides in him until the desired results follow [Footnote ref 1].

It is needless to dilate upon these, for the voluminous works of S'abara and k.u.marila make an elaborate research into the nature of sacrifices, rituals, and other relevant matters in great detail, which anyhow can have but little interest for a student of philosophy.

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[Footnote 1: See Dr [email protected] Jha's [email protected]_ and Madhava's _Nyayamalavistara_.]

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CHAPTER X

THE [email protected] SCHOOL OF VEDaNTA

Comprehension of the philosophical Issues more essential than the Dialectic of controversy.

[email protected]_ in Sanskrit signifies the means and the movement by which knowledge is acquired, _pramata_ means the subject or the knower who cognizes, _prama_ the result of [email protected] knowledge, _prameya_ the object of knowledge, and [email protected]_ the validity of knowledge acquired. The validity of knowledge is sometimes used in the sense of the faithfulness of knowledge to its object, and sometimes in the sense of an inner notion of validity in the mind of the subject--the knower (that his perceptions are true), which moves him to work in accordance with his perceptions to adapt himself to his environment for the attainment of pleasurable and the avoidance of painful things.

The question wherein consists the [email protected] of knowledge has not only an epistemological and psychological bearing but a metaphysical one also. It contains on one side a theory of knowledge based on an a.n.a.lysis of psychological experience, and on the other indicates a metaphysical situation consistent with the theory of knowledge. All the different schools tried to justify a theory of knowledge by an appeal to the a.n.a.lysis and interpretation of experience which the others sometimes ignored or sometimes regarded as unimportant. The thinkers of different schools were accustomed often to meet together and defeat one another in actual debates, and the result of these debates was frequently very important in determining the prestige of any school of thought. If a Buddhist for example could defeat a great Nyaya or [email protected] thinker in a great public debate attended by many learned scholars from different parts of the country, his fame at once spread all over the country and he could probably secure a large number of followers on the spot. Extensive tours of disputation were often undertaken by great masters all over the country for the purpose of defeating the teachers of the opposite schools and of securing adherents to their own. These debates were therefore not generally conducted merely in a pa.s.sionless philosophical

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mood with the object of arriving at the truth but in order to inflict a defeat on opponents and to establish the ascendency of some particular school of thought. It was often a sense of personal victory and of the victory of the school of thought to which the debater adhered that led him to pursue the debate. Advanced Sanskrit philosophical works give us a picture of the att.i.tude of mind of these debaters and we find that most of these debates attempt to criticize the different schools of thinkers by exposing their inconsistencies and self-contradictions by close dialectical reasoning, antic.i.p.ating the answers of the opponent, asking him to define his statements, and ultimately proving that his theory was inconsistent, led to contradictions, and was opposed to the testimony of experience. In reading an advanced work on Indian philosophy in the original, a student has to pa.s.s through an interminable series of dialectic arguments, and negative criticisms (to thwart opponents) sometimes called [email protected]@da_, before he can come to the root of the quarrel, the real philosophical divergence.

All the resources of the arts of controversy find full play for silencing the opponent before the final philosophical answer is given. But to a modern student of philosophy, who belongs to no party and is consequently indifferent to the respective victory of either side, the most important thing is the comprehension of the different aspects from which the problem of the theory of knowledge and its a.s.sociated metaphysical theory was looked at by the philosophers, and also a clear understanding of the deficiency of each view, the value of the mutual criticisms, the speculations on the experience of each school, their a.n.a.lysis, and their net contribution to philosophy. With Vedanta we come to an end of the present volume, and it may not be out of place here to make a brief survey of the main conflicting theories from the point of view of the theory of knowledge, in order to indicate the position of the Vedanta of the [email protected] school in the field of Indian philosophy so far as we have traversed it. I shall therefore now try to lay before my readers the solution of the theory of knowledge ([email protected]_) reached by some of the main schools of thought. Their relations to the solution offered by the [email protected] Vedanta will also be dealt with, as we shall attempt to sketch the views of the Vedanta later on in this chapter.

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The philosophical situation. A Review.

Before dealing with the Vedanta system it seems advisable to review the general att.i.tude of the schools already discussed to the main philosophical and epistemological questions which determine the position of the Vedanta as taught by [email protected] and his school.

The Sautrantika Buddhist says that in all his affairs man is concerned with the fulfilment of his ends and desires ([email protected]_).

This however cannot be done without right knowledge (_samyagjnana_) which rightly represents things to men. Knowledge is said to be right when we can get things just as we perceived them.

So far as mere representation or illumination of objects is concerned, it is a patent fact that we all have knowledge, and therefore this does not deserve criticism or examination. Our enquiry about knowledge is thus restricted to its aspect of later verification or contradiction in experience, for we are all concerned to know how far our perceptions of things which invariably precede all our actions can be trusted as rightly indicating what we want to get in our practical experience (_arthapradpakatva_). The perception is right (_abhranta_ non-illusory) when following its representation we can get in the external world such things as were represented by it ([email protected]_). That perception alone can be right which is generated by the object and not merely supplied by our imagination.

When I say "this is the cow I had seen," what I see is the object with the brown colour, horns, feet, etc., but the fact that this is called cow, or that this is existing from a past time, is not perceived by the visual sense, as this is not generated by the visual object. For all things are momentary, and that which I see now never existed before so as to be invested with this or that permanent name. This a.s.sociation of name and permanence to objects perceived is called _kaipana_ or _abhilapa_.

Our perception is correct only so far as it is without the abhilapa a.s.sociation ([email protected]_), for though this is taken as a part of our perceptual experience it is not derived from the object, and hence its a.s.sociation with the object is an evident error. The object as una.s.sociated with name--the nirvikalpa--is thus what is perceived. As a result of the [email protected] the manovijnana or thought and mental perception of pleasure and pain is also determined. At one moment perception reveals the object as an

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object of knowledge (_grahya_), and by the fact of the rise of such a percept, at another moment it appears as a thing realizable or attainable in the external world. The special features of the object undefinable in themselves as being what they are in themselves ([email protected]@na_) are what is actually perceived ([email protected]@saya_) [Footnote ref 1].

The [email protected]_ (result of perception) is the

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[Footnote 1: There is a difference of opinion about the meaning of the word "[email protected]@na" of Dharmakirtti between ray esteemed friend Professor Stcherbatsky of Petrograd and myself. He maintains that Dharmakirtti held that the content of the presentative element at the moment of perception was almost totally empty. Thus he writes to me, "According to your interpretation [email protected]@na mean,--the object (or idea with Vijnanavadin) _from which everything past and everything future has been eliminated_, this I do not deny at all. But I maintain that if everything past and future has been taken away, what remains? _The present_ and the present is a [email protected]@na_ i.e. nothing.... The reverse of [email protected]@na is a [email protected]@nasamtana or simply [email protected] and in every [email protected] there is a synthesis ekibhava of moments past and future, produced by the intellect (buddhi = nis'caya = kalpana = adhyavasaya)...There is in the perception of a jug _something_ (a [email protected]@na of sense knowledge) which we must distinguish from the _idea_ of a jug (which is always a [email protected], always vikalpita), and if you take the idea away in a strict unconditional sense, no knowledge remains: [email protected] jnanena prapayitumas'akyatvat. This is absolutely the Kantian teaching about _Synthesis of Apprehension_. Accordingly [email protected] is a _transcendental_ source of knowledge, because practically speaking it gives no knowledge at all. This [email protected]_ is _asatkalpa_. Kant says that without the elements of intuition (= sense-knowledge = [email protected] = [email protected]) our cognitions would be empty and without the elements of intellect (kalpana = buddhi = synthesis = ekibhava) they would be blind.

Empirically both are always combined. This is exactly the theory of Dharmakirtti. He is a Vijnanavadi as I understand, because he maintains the cognizability of ideas (vijnana) alone, but the reality is an incognizable foundation of our knowledge; he admits, it is bahya, it is artha, it is [email protected]@na = [email protected]@na; that is the reason for which he sometimes is called Sautrantika and this school is sometimes called Sautranta-vijnanavada, as opposed to the Vijnanavada of [email protected] and aryasanga, which had no elaborate theory of cognition. If the jug as it exists in our representation were the [email protected]@na and paramarthasat, what would remain of Vijnanavada? But there is the perception of the jug as opposed to the _pure idea_ of a jug (s'uddha kalpana), an element of reality, the sensational [email protected]@na, which is communicated to us by sense knowledge. Kant's 'thing in itself' is also a [email protected]@na and also an element of sense knowledge of pure sense as opposed to pure reason, Dharmakirtti has also _s'uddha kalpana_ and _s'uddham [email protected]_. ...And very interesting is the opposition between [email protected] and anumana, the first moves from [email protected]@na to [email protected] and the second from [email protected] to [email protected]@na, that is the reason that although bhranta the anumana is nevertheless [email protected] because through it we indirectly also reach [email protected]@na, the [email protected]@na. It is bhranta directly and [email protected] indirectly; [email protected] is [email protected] directly and bhranta (asatkalpa) indirectly... ."

So far as the pa.s.sages to which Professor Stcherbatsky refers are concerned, I am in full agreement with him. But I think that he pushes the interpretation too far on Kantian lines. When I perceive "this is blue," the perception consists of two parts, the actual presentative element of sense-knowledge ([email protected]@na_) and the affirmation (_nis'caya_). So far we are in complete agreement. But Professor Stcherbatsky says that this sense-knowledge is a [email protected]@na (moment) and is nothing. I also hold that it is a [email protected]@na, but it is nothing only in the sense that it is not the same as the notion involving affirmation such as "this is blue." The affirmative process occurring at the succeeding moments is determined by the presentative element of the first moment ([email protected]_ N.T., p. 20) but this presentative element divested from the product of the affirmative process of the succeeding moments is not characterless, though we cannot express its character; as soon as we try to express it, names and other ideas consisting of affirmation are a.s.sociated and these did not form a part of the presentative element. Its own character is said to be its own specific nature ([email protected]@na_). But what is this specific nature?

Dharmakirtti's answer on this point is that by specific nature he means those specific characteristics of the object which appear clear when the object is near and hazy when it is at a distance (_yasyarthasya sannidhanasannidhanabkyam jnanapratibhasabhedastat [email protected]@nam_ N., p. 1 and N.T., p. 16). Sense-knowledge thus gives us the specific characteristics of the object, and this has the same form as the object itself; it is the appearance of the "blue" in its specific character in the mind and when this is a.s.sociated by the affirmative or ideational process, the result is the concept or idea "this is blue"

([email protected] [email protected]@m nilabodharupamavasthapyate ...

nilasarupyamasya [email protected] [email protected] tvasya [email protected]_, N.T.p. 22). At the first moment there is the appearance of the blue ([email protected] hi vijnanam_, N.T. 19) and this is direct acquaintance (_yatkincit arthasya [email protected] [email protected]_, N.T. 7) and this is real (_paramarthasat_) and valid. This blue sensation is different from the idea "this is blue" (_nilabodha_, N.T. 22) which is the result of the former ([email protected]_) through the a.s.sociation of the affirmative process (_adhyavasaya_) and is regarded as invalid for it contains elements other than what were presented to the sense and is a _vikalpapratyaya_. In my opinion [email protected]@na_ therefore means pure sensation of the moment presenting the specific features of the object and with Dharmakirtti this is the only thing which is valid in perception and vikalpapratyaya or pramanaphala is the idea or concept which follows it. But though the latter is a product of the former, yet, being the construction of succeeding moments, it cannot give us the pure stage of the first moment of sensation-presentation ([email protected]@nasya prapayitumas'akyatvat_, N.T. 16). N.T. = [email protected]_, N = _Nyayabindu (Peterson's edition).]

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ideational concept and power that such knowledge has of showing the means which being followed the thing can be got (_yena [email protected] [email protected] prapito bhavati_). [email protected] then is the similarity of the knowledge with the object by which it is generated, by which we a.s.sure ourselves that this is our knowledge of the object as it is perceived, and are thus led to attain it by practical experience.

Yet this later stage is [email protected] and not [email protected] which consists merely in the vision of the thing (devoid of other a.s.sociations), and which determines the att.i.tude of the perceiver towards the perceived object. The [email protected] therefore only refers to the newly-acquired knowledge ([email protected]_) as this is of use to the perceiver in determining his relations with the objective world. This account of perception leaves out the real epistemological question as to how the knowledge is generated by the external world, or what it is in itself. It only looks to the correctness or faithfulness of the perception to the object and its value for us in the practical realization of our ends. The question of the relation of the external world with knowledge as determining the latter is regarded as unimportant.

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The Yogacaras or idealistic Buddhists take their cue from the above-mentioned Sautrantika Buddhists, and say that since we can come into touch with knowledge and knowledge alone, what is the use of admitting an external world of objects as the data of sensation determining our knowledge? You say that sensations are copies of the external world, but why should you say that they copy, and not that they alone exist? We never come into touch with objects in themselves; these can only be grasped by us simultaneously with knowledge of them, they must therefore be the same as knowledge (_sahopalambhaniyamat abhedo [email protected]_); for it is in and through knowledge that external objects can appear to us, and without knowledge we are not in touch with the so-called external objects. So it is knowledge which is self-apparent in itself, that projects itself in such a manner as to appear as referring to other external objects.

We all acknowledge that in dreams there are no external objects, but even there we have knowledge. The question why then if there are no external objects, there should be so much diversity in the forms of knowledge, is not better solved by the a.s.sumption of an external world; for in such an a.s.sumption, the external objects have to be admitted as possessing the infinitely diverse powers of diversely affecting and determining our knowledge; that being so, it may rather be said that in the beginningless series of flowing knowledge, preceding knowledge-moments by virtue of their inherent specific qualities determine the succeeding knowledge-moments. Thus knowledge alone exists; the projection of an external word is an illusion of knowledge brought about by beginningless potencies of desire (_vasana_) a.s.sociated with it. The preceding knowledge determines the succeeding one and that another and so on. Knowledge, pleasure, pain, etc. are not qualities requiring a permanent ent.i.ty as soul in which they may inhere, but are the various forms in which knowledge appears. Even the cognition, "I perceive a blue thing," is but a form of knowledge, and this is often erroneously interpreted as referring to a permanent knower. Though the cognitions are all pa.s.sing 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

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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 ent.i.ty 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, Nyaya, [email protected], and the [email protected], 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 t