Verse 252

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

भवन्मते हि नाकारो बुद्धेर्बाह्यस्तु वर्ण्यते ।
न विवक्षितदेशे च गजयष्ट्यादयः स्थिताः ॥ २५२ ॥

bhavanmate hi nākāro buddherbāhyastu varṇyate |
na vivakṣitadeśe ca gajayaṣṭyādayaḥ sthitāḥ || 252 ||

Then again, under your view, the external form is not declared to belong to the cognition; nor are the elephant, pole and other things actually existent at the place desired.—(252)

 

Kamalaśīla’s commentary (tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā):

Then again, under your—Mīmāṃsaka’s—view, the form that appears (in Cognition) does not belong to the Cognition; as you assert that the Cognition is formless.—“What if it is so?”—At the place desired etc.;—i.e. at the place where the ‘imposition’ is made—,the Cognitions should appear as connected with that same time and place wherewith the said objects—Elephant and the rest—are connected;—how is it then that they appear at a time and place which are not connected with themselves and which are yet different from those with which the objects are connected?—From this it follows that these Cognitions have no real basis, and they are, in reality, unmixed in character and mobile; that they are so is due to the fact of their appearing only occasionally;—and it also becomes established that the Soul, which is of the nature of the said Cognition, must also be evanescent and many.

The following might be urged;—“Cognition is a property of the Soul; hence the diversity of the Cognition need not imply diversity of the Soul, the latter being only an object having that property.”

This cannot be right; ‘Pratyaya’ (Cognition), ‘Caitanya’ (Sentience), ‘Buddhi’ (Intelligence), ‘Jñāna’ (Knowledge) are all synonymous terms; nor does a mere difference in names make any difference in the nature of things. Further, even with a difference in their names, all these are actually accepted (by you) as being of the nature of Sentience (Caitanya); and as this Sentience is one and the same, there can be no distinction among the Cognitions that are of the same nature. If it were not so, then, on account of the attribution of contrary properties to them, the two (Sentience and Cognition) would become entirely different from one another.

This same argument in proof of Cognitions having no real basis serves also to prove the imperceptibility of Cognitions. For instance, it has been proved that the form appearing in the Cognition cannot be the external Elephant, etc.; so that it becomes established that the Cognitions apprehending that form as their own are of themselves, because they are self-luminous in their character.—(252)