A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 - Surendranath Dasgupta (free ebook reader for android .txt) 📗

life even under the British administration is explained according to the Mîmâ@msâ maxims. Its relations to the Vedânta philosophy will be briefly indicated in the next chapter. Its relations with Nyâya-Vais'e@sika have also been pointed out in various places of this chapter. The views of the two schools of Mîmâ@msâ as propounded by Prabhâkara and Kumârila on all the important topics have

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[Footnote 1: Mahâmahopadhyâya Haraprasâda S'âstrî says, in his introduction to Six Buddhist Nyâya Tracts, that "Kumârila preceded Sa@nkara by two generations."]

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also been pointed out. Prabhâkara's views however could not win many followers in later times, but while living it is said that he was regarded by Kumârila as a very strong rival [Footnote ref 1]. Hardly any new contribution has been made to the Mîmâ@msâ philosophy after Kumârila and Prabhâkara. The Mîmâ@msâ sûtras deal mostly with the principles of the interpretation of the Vedic texts in connection with sacrifices, and very little of philosophy can be gleaned out of them. S'abara's contributions are also slight and vague. Vârttikakâra's views also can only be gathered from the references to them by Kumârila and Prabhâkara. What we know of Mîmâ@msâ philosophy consists of their views and theirs alone. It did not develop any further after them. Works written on the subject in later times were but of a purely expository nature. I do not know of any work on Mîmâ@msâ written in English except the excellent one by Dr Ga@ngânâtha Jhâ on the Prabhâkara Mîmâ@msâ to which I have frequently referred.

The Parata@h-prâmâ@nya doctrine of Nyâya and the
Svata@h-prâmâ@nya doctrine of Mîmâ@msâ.

The doctrine of the self-validity of knowledge (svata@h-prâmâ@nya) forms the cornerstone on which the whole structure of the Mîmâ@msâ philosophy is based. Validity means the certitude of truth. The Mîmâ@msâ philosophy asserts that all knowledge excepting the action of remembering (sm@rti) or memory is valid in itself, for it itself certifies its own truth, and neither depends on any other extraneous condition nor on any other knowledge for its validity. But Nyâya holds that this self-validity of knowledge is a question which requires an explanation. It is true that under certain conditions a piece of knowledge is produced in us, but what is meant by saying that this knowledge is a proof of its own truth? When we perceive anything as blue, it is the direct result of visual contact, and this visual contact cannot certify that the knowledge generated is true, as the visual contact is not in any touch with the knowledge

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[Footnote 1: There is a story that Kumârila, not being able to convert Prabhâkara, his own pupil, to his views, attempted a trick and pretended that he was dead. His disciples then asked Prabhâkara whether his burial rites should be performed according to Kumârila's views or Prabhâkara's. Prabhâkara said that his own views were erroneous, but these were held by him only to rouse up Kumârila's pointed attacks, whereas Kumârila's views were the right ones. Kumârila then rose up and said that Prabhâkara was defeated, but the latter said he was not defeated so long as he was alive. But this has of course no historic value.]

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it has conditioned. Moreover, knowledge is a mental affair and how can it certify the objective truth of its representation? In other words, how can my perception "a blue thing" guarantee that what is subjectively perceived as blue is really so objectively as well? After my perception of anything as blue we do not have any such perception that what I have perceived as blue is really so. So this so-called self-validity of knowledge cannot be testified or justified by any perception. We can only be certain that knowledge has been produced by the perceptual act, but there is nothing in this knowledge or its revelation of its object from which we can infer that the perception is also objectively valid or true. If the production of any knowledge should certify its validity then there would be no invalidity, no illusory knowledge, and following our perception of even a mirage we should never come to grief. But we are disappointed often in our perceptions, and this proves that when we practically follow the directions of our perception we are undecided as to its validity, which can only be ascertained by the correspondence of the perception with what we find later on in practical experience. Again, every piece of knowledge is the result of certain causal collocations, and as such depends upon them for its production, and hence cannot be said to rise without depending on anything else. It is meaningless to speak of the validity of knowledge, for validity always refers to objective realization of our desires and attempts proceeding in accordance with our knowledge. People only declare their knowledge invalid when proceeding practically in accordance with it they are disappointed. The perception of a mirage is called invalid when proceeding in accordance with our perception we do not find anything that can serve the purposes of water (e.g. drinking, bathing). The validity or truth of knowledge is thus the attainment by practical experience of the object and the fulfilment of all our purposes from it (arthakriyâjñâna or phalajñâna) just as perception or knowledge represented them to the perceiver. There is thus no self-validity of knowledge (svata@h-prâmâ@nya), but validity is ascertained by sa@mvâda or agreement with the objective facts of experience [Footnote ref l].

It is easy to see that this Nyâya objection is based on the supposition that knowledge is generated by certain objective collocations of conditions, and that knowledge so produced can

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[Footnote 1: See Nyâyamañjarî, pp. 160-173.]

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only be tested by its agreement with objective facts. But this theory of knowledge is merely an hypothesis; for it can never be experienced that knowledge is the product of any collocations; we have a perception and immediately we become aware of certain objective things; knowledge reveals to us the facts of the objective world and this is experienced by us always. But that the objective world generates knowledge in us is only an hypothesis which can hardly be demonstrated by experience. It is the supreme prerogative of knowledge that it reveals all other things. It is not a phenomenon like any other phenomenon of the world. When we say that knowledge has been produced in us by the external collocations, we just take a perverse point of view which is unwarranted by experience; knowledge only photographs the objective phenomena for us; but there is nothing to show that knowledge has been generated by these phenomena. This is only a theory which applies the ordinary conceptions of causation to knowledge and this is evidently unwarrantable. Knowledge is not like any other phenomena for it stands above them and interprets or illumines them all. There can be no validity in things, for truth applies to knowledge and knowledge alone. What we call agreement with facts by practical experience is but the agreement of previous knowledge with later knowledge; for objective facts never come to us directly, they are always taken on the evidence of knowledge, and they have no other certainty than what is bestowed on them by knowledge. There arise indeed different kinds of knowledge revealing different things, but these latter do not on that account generate the former, for this is never experienced; we are never aware of any objective fact before it is revealed by knowledge. Why knowledge makes different kinds of revelations is indeed more than we can say, for experience only shows that knowledge reveals objective facts and not why it does so. The rise of knowledge is never perceived by us to be dependent on any objective fact, for all objective facts are dependent on it for its revelation or illumination. This is what is said to be the self-validity (svata@h-prâmâ@ya) of knowledge in its production (utpatti). As soon as knowledge is produced, objects are revealed to us; there is no intermediate link between the rise of knowledge and the revelation of objects on which knowledge depends for producing its action of revealing or illuminating them. Thus knowledge is not only independent

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of anything else in its own rise but in its own action as well (svakâryakara@ne svata@h prâmâ@nya@m jñânasya). Whenever there is any knowledge it carries with it the impression that it is certain and valid, and we are naturally thus prompted to work (prav@rtti} according to its direction. There is no indecision in our mind at the time of the rise of knowledge as to the correctness of knowledge; but just as knowledge rises, it carries with it the certainty of its revelation, presence, or action. But in cases of illusory perception other perceptions or cognitions dawn which carry with them the notion that our original knowledge was not valid. Thus though the invalidity of any knowledge may appear to us by later experience, and in accordance with which we reject our former knowledge, yet when the knowledge first revealed itself to us it carried with it the conviction of certainty which goaded us on to work according to its indication. Whenever a man works according to his knowledge, he does so with the conviction that his knowledge is valid, and not in a passive or uncertain temper of mind. This is what Mîmâ@msa means when it says that the validity of knowledge appears immediately with its rise, though its invalidity may be derived from later experience or some other data (jñânasya prâ@mâ@nyam svata@h aprâmâ@nya@m parata@h). Knowledge attained is proved invalid when later on a contradictory experience (bâdhakajñâna) comes in or when our organs etc. are known to be faulty and defective (_kara@nado@sajñâna). It is from these that knowledge appearing as valid is invalidated; when we take all necessary care to look for these and yet find them not, we must think that they do not exist. Thus the validity of knowledge certified at the moment of its production need not be doubted unnecessarily when even after enquiry we do not find any defect in sense or any contradiction in later experience. All knowledge except memory is thus regarded as valid independently by itself as a general rule, unless it is invalidated later on. Memory is excluded because the phenomenon of memory depends upon a previous experience, and its existing latent impressions, and cannot thus be regarded as arising independently by itself.

The place of sense organs in perception.

We have just said that knowledge arises by itself and that it could not have been generated by sense-contact. If this be so, the diversity of perceptions is however left unexplained. But in

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face of the Nyâya philosophy explaining all perceptions on the ground of diverse sense-contact the Mîmâ@msâ probably could not afford to remain silent on such an important point. It therefore accepted the Nyâya view of sense-contact as a condition of knowledge with slight modifications, and yet held their doctrine of svata@h-prâmâ@nya. It does not appear to have been conscious of a conflict between these two different principles of the production of knowledge. Evidently the point of view from which it looked at it was that the fact that there were the senses and contacts of them with the objects, or such special capacities in them by virtue of which the things could be perceived, was with us a matter of inference. Their actions in producing the knowledge are never experienced at the time of the rise of knowledge, but when the knowledge arises we argue that such and such senses must have acted. The only case where knowledge is found to be dependent on anything else seems to be the case where one knowledge is found to depend on a previous experience or knowledge as in the case of memory. In other cases the dependence of the rise of knowledge on anything else cannot be felt, for the physical collocations conditioning knowledge are not felt to be operating before the rise of knowledge, and these are only inferred later on in accordance with the nature and characteristic of knowledge. We always have our first start in knowledge which is directly experienced from which we may proceed later on to the operation and nature of objective facts in relation to it. Thus it is that though contact of the senses with the objects may later on be imagined to be the conditioning factor, yet the rise of knowledge as well as our notion of its validity strikes us as original, underived, immediate, and first-hand.

Prabhâkara gives us a sketch as to how the existence of the senses may be inferred. Thus our cognitions of objects are phenomena which are not all the same, and do not happen always in the same manner, for these vary differently at different moments; the cognitions of course take place in the soul which may thus be regarded as the material cause (samavâyikâra@na); but there must be some such movements or other specific associations (asamavâyikâra@na) which render the production of this or that specific cognition possible. The immaterial causes subsist either in the cause of the material cause (e.g. in the case of the colouring of a white