3.2. Epistemology of Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika

The Vaibhāṣika believes that one have an immediate and direct understanding of the nature of objects as they are in themselves. One is directly aware of the external objects and therefore, the senses lead to reliable knowledge.^[1] Sensory awareness is closely connected to perceptual and conceptual knowledge. Being cognitive activities perception and conception function when one tries to connect with those things which are already gone through in sensory awareness. Perception and conception are not two different entities but they are two forms of activity involved in one cognition. In perception there is direct contact with other actualities and conception involves interpretative activity. Vaibhāṣika accepts immediate apprehension and inference as the means of valid knowledge. The cases of inference include judgement of perception which are neither pure inferences nor pure perception.

In the field of perception, the Vaibhāṣika maintains three kinds of direct knowledge. They are—

(i) The first type is immediate sensory apprehension which is devoid of intellectual characterization. It perceives the here-and newness and individual existence of the objects. In it one is able to perceive colour-forms and hear sounds. “According to Vaibhāṣika this “seeing” or “hearing” is occasional by the specific function characteristic of a particular sense-organ. The eye is specifically charged with the function of seeing-forms, and in discharging its function it does not look at askance to any higher faculty of mind. Perceiving at this stage is “sensing”.”^[2]

(ii) The second kind of knowledge is intellectual apprehension that unfolds an immediate awareness of meaning.

(iii) The third kind of knowledge is mystical apprehension which transcends the realm of concept and is not limited to sensory apprehension.

The Vaibhāṣikas hold the theory of direct realism “Bāhya-pratyakṣavāda”.^[3] According to them, the existence of external object is cannot be known, if we do not admit that they are directly perceived by us. For example-inference of fire from the perception is possible because we have seen both smoke and fire together in the past. A person who has never seen fire before cannot infer its existence from the perception of smoke. So, it is proved that external object is directly known or perceived by us.

The Vaibhāṣika scholar holds experience is to be of two types-Grahan and Adhyavasaya. The experience which is formless through sense-organs in the first stage of knowledge is called Grahan. This is knowledge without any attribute and is comparable to the sensation in the language of psychology. When this knowledge which is formless, assumes form and appears and is with attributes, it is known as Adhyavasaya and is comparable to the perception in language of psychology. Hence, they admit the existence of things or objects which are eternal and they consider them as the subject of perception.

The Sautrāntika on the other hand believes that in perception one is in cognitive contact with something which is neither oneself nor one’s mental states. At the other end of cognitive contact may be a thing which is either actual or illusive. When the object is actual, there is an ontological object equivalent to the epistemological object and when the object is illusive one have an epistemological object without corresponding to the ontological object. The perceptual condition is direct whereas the conceptual condition is discursive. The Sautrāntika focused on the direct, non-discursive and intuitive mode of knowledge which leads to the reality. It may be said that things like “sky-flower” etc have epistemological status but the Sautrāntika knew that these kinds of objects are not similar to these things denoted by them in the external world.^[4]

The Sautrāntika accepts the reality of mind and also of external objects. According to them, one cannot elaborate the illusory appearance of external object, if one does not accept the existence of external object. If one never seen anywhere any external objects, he could not say, that through illusion, consciousness looks like an object that is external. The expression “like an external object” is does not have any sense as “like the square circle” because an external object is said to be totally not real and never perceived.^[5] Further, whenever we perceived an object like a tree, the tree is felt as external and consciousness of it as internal. So a thing or the object, from the very beginning, is said to be totally different from consciousness. If the tree will be similar with the subject, who perceives it, then the perceiver would have said, “I am the tree”. In addition to this, if there were no external objects or we do not accept the external objects then the distinction between the “consciousness of a tree” and the “consciousness of a cloth” could not be explained, because as consciousness both are identical; it is not only regarding the objects that they differ. So, we must accept that the existence of different external objects outside consciousness. These objects provide particular forms to the different states of consciousness. Through these forms or representations of the objects in the mind, one can infer the existence of their causes, i.e. the objects that exist outside the mind.

The main reason why we cannot perceive at will any object or a thing at any time and place, depends on the fact that a perception depend on four different conditions and not simply on the mind. They are:

1. Ālambanapratyaya-Ālambana is the cause of external things like tree, jug etc, because the form of the knowledge is born out of it. In other words, we can say there must be object to give its form to consciousness.

2. Samanantarapratyaya-Samanantara means parallel and is so called because it is only after the previous mental stage that the next stage achieves consciousness. In other words, we can say there ought to be the conscious mind to cause the consciousness of the form. It is different from the content of the cognition, which is its ālambana, in this that the character of the samanantarapratyaya is uniform, whereas the content is variable. According to Dharmottara, “It is similar or coordinate in respect of its cognitive quality (jñānatva) and is the immediate precedent (anantara), as there is nothing intervening and is termed the pratyaya, as it is the cause thereof.”^[6]

3. Adhipatipratyaya-The senses have been known as the Adhipati pratyaya of the knowledge. It is also known as dominating or determinative^[7] cause. For this school, without the senses, there can be no external knowledge of objects even when the first two causes are available. The knowledge of the forms, touch, etc of objects that are external depends on the existence of the senses. In other words, we can say there must be the sense to figure out the kind of the consciousness, that is, whether the consciousness of an object would be visual, tactual, and olfactory and so on.

4. Sahakāripratyaya-Sahakāripratyaya is the subsidiary condition which is natural for knowledge. For instance-light, form etc without which knowledge does not become possible. In other words, we can say that there must be some favourable auxiliary condition, like-light, right position and so on.

Sautrāntika accepts these four causal factors, which are necessary to generate perceptual knowledge. By combining all these things together one can have the perception of the object. The form of the object hence produced in the mind, is the effect of the object among other things. We cannot perceive the existence of an object because mind immediately knows is the copy of the object in its own consciousness. But from this it infers the object without which the copy would not arise.

The Sautrāntika theory is called the theory of inferability of external objects which is known as Bāhyā-anumeya-vāda. The school Sautrāntika is called so because they believe in the authority of Sutta-piṭaka^[8] while Vaibhāṣikas believe in Abhidhamma piṭaka and Vibhāsā. It is because of believed in vibhāsā or commentary this school has been called Vaibhāṣika.^[9]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

S. Chatterjee & D. Datta, op.cit, p.142.

[2]:

C.S. Vyas, Buddhist theory of Perception, p.45.

[3]:

D.N. Shastri, Critique of Indian Realism, p. 39.

[4]:

Ibid., p.53.

[5]:

S. Chatterjee & D. Datta, op.cit, p.140.

[6]:

S. Mookerjee, Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, p. 317

[7]:

Loke niyāmakasyā dhipatitvopalambhāt, Ibid, p. 318.

[8]:

Many works of this class are named suttānta. Y. Sōgen, Systems of Buddhistic Thought, p.5.

[9]:

Y. Sōgen, op.cit, p.102.