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