A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

by Surendranath Dasgupta

407

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 attitude 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, anticipating 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 pass through an interminable series of dialectic arguments, and negative criticisms (to thwart opponents) sometimes called vita@n@dâ, 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 associated 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 analysis, and their net contribution to philosophy. With Vedânta 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 Vedânta of the S'a@nkara 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 (pramâ@navâda) reached by some of the main schools of thought. Their relations to the solution offered by the S'a@nkara Vedânta will also be dealt with, as we shall attempt to sketch the views of the Vedanta later on in this chapter.

408

The philosophical situation. A Review.

Before dealing with the Vedânta system it seems advisable to review the general attitude of the schools already discussed to the main philosophical and epistemological questions which determine the position of the Vedânta as taught by S'a@nkara and his school.

The Sautrântika Buddhist says that in all his affairs man is concerned with the fulfilment of his ends and desires (puru@sâdrtka). This however cannot be done without right knowledge (samyagjñâna) 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 (arthaprâdpakatva). The perception is right (abhrânta non-illusory) when following its representation we can get in the external world such things as were represented by it (sa@mvâdakatva). 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 association of name and permanence to objects perceived is called kaipanâ or abhilâpa. Our perception is correct only so far as it is without the abhilâpa association (kalpanâpo@dha), for though this is taken as a part of our perceptual experience it is not derived from the object, and hence its association with the object is an evident error. The object as unassociated with name—the nirvikalpa—is thus what is perceived. As a result of the pratyak@sa the manovijñâna or thought and mental perception of pleasure and pain is also determined. At one moment perception reveals the object as an

409

object of knowledge (grâhya), 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 (svalak@sa@na) are what is actually perceived (pratyak@savi@saya) [Footnote ref 1]. The pramâ@naphala (result of perception) is the

___________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: There is a difference of opinion about the meaning of the word "svalak@sa@na" of Dharmakîrtti between ray esteemed friend Professor Stcherbatsky of Petrograd and myself. He maintains that Dharmakîrtti 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 svalak@sa@na mean,—the object (or idea with Vijñânavâdin) 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 k@sa@na i.e. nothing…. The reverse of k@sa@na is a k@sa@nasamtâna or simply sa@mtâna and in every sa@mtâna there is a synthesis ekîbhâva of moments past and future, produced by the intellect (buddhi = nis'caya = kalpana = adhyavasâya)…There is in the perception of a jug something (a k@sa@na of sense knowledge) which we must distinguish from the idea of a jug (which is always a sa@mtâna, always vikalpita), and if you take the idea away in a strict unconditional sense, no knowledge remains: k@sanasya jñânena prâpayitumas'akyatvât. This is absolutely the Kantian teaching about Synthesis of Apprehension. Accordingly pratyak@sa is a transcendental source of knowledge, because practically speaking it gives no knowledge at all. This pramâ@na is asatkalpa. Kant says that without the elements of intuition (= sense-knowledge = pratyak@sa = kalpanâpo@dha) our cognitions would be empty and without the elements of intellect (kalpanâ = buddhi = synthesis = ekîbhâva) they would be blind. Empirically both are always combined. This is exactly the theory of Dharmakîrtti. He is a Vijñânavâdî as I understand, because he maintains the cognizability of ideas (vijñâna) alone, but the reality is an incognizable foundation of our knowledge; he admits, it is bâhya, it is artha, it is arthakriyâk@sa@na = svalak@sa@na; that is the reason for which he sometimes is called Sautrântika and this school is sometimes called Sautranta-vijñânavâda, as opposed to the Vijñânavâda of As'vagho@sa and Âryâsanga, which had no elaborate theory of cognition. If the jug as it exists in our representation were the svalak@sa@na and paramârthasat, what would remain of Vijñânavâda? But there is the perception of the jug as opposed to the pure idea of a jug (s'uddhâ kalpanâ), an element of reality, the sensational k@sa@na, which is communicated to us by sense knowledge. Kant's 'thing in itself' is also a k@sa@na and also an element of sense knowledge of pure sense as opposed to pure reason, Dharmakîrtti has also s'uddhâ kalpanâ and s'uddham pratyak@sam. …And very interesting is the opposition between pratyak@sa and anumâna, the first moves from k@sa@na to sa@mtâna and the second from sa@mtâna to k@sa@na, that is the reason that although bhrânta the anumâna is nevertheless pramâ@na because through it we indirectly also reach k@sa@na, the arthakriyâk@sa@na. It is bhrânta directly and pramâ@na indirectly; pratyak@sa is pramâ@na directly and bhrânta (asatkalpa) indirectly… ." So far as the passages 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 (svalak@sa@na) and the affirmation (nis'caya). So far we are in complete agreement. But Professor Stcherbatsky says that this sense-knowledge is a k@sa@na (moment) and is nothing. I also hold that it is a k@sa@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 (pratyak@sabalotpanna 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 associated and these did not form a part of the presentative element. Its own character is said to be its own specific nature (svalak@sa@na). But what is this specific nature? Dharmakîrtti'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 (yasyârthasya sannidhânâsannidhânâbkyâm jñânapratibhâsabhedastat svalak@sa@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 associated by the affirmative or ideational process, the result is the concept or idea "this is blue" (nîlasarûpa@m pratyak@samanubhûyamâna@m nîlabodharûpamavasthâpyate … nîlasârûpyamasya pramâ@nam nîlavikalpanarûpa@m tvasya pramâ@naphalam, N.T.p. 22). At the first moment there is the appearance of the blue (nîlanirbhâsa@m hi vijñânam, N.T. 19) and this is direct acquaintance (yatkiñcit arthasya sâk@sâtkârijñânam tatpratyak@samucyate, N.T. 7) and this is real (paramârthasat) and valid. This blue sensation is different from the idea "this is blue" (nîlabodha, N.T. 22) which is the result of the former (pramâ@naphala) through the association of the affirmative process (adhyavasâya) and is regarded as invalid for it contains elements other than what were presented to the sense and is a vikalpapratyaya. In my opinion svalak@sa@na therefore means pure sensation of the moment presenting the specific features of the object and with Dharmakîrtti this is the only thing which is valid in perception and vikalpapratyaya or pramânaphala 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 (k@sa@nasya prâpayitumas'akyatvât, N.T. 16). N.T. = Nyâyabindu@tîkâ, N = _Nyâyabindu (Peterson's edition).]