3.1. Perception according to Gaṅgeśa

[Full title: 2. The Navya-Naiyāyika Theory of Perception—Perception according to Gaṅgeśa]

Gaṅgeśa, the founder of Navya-Nyāya school, maintains that perception is direct and immediate knowledge.^[1] It is the main characteristics of the perception. Either it may be generated by the contact of sense-organs with their objects or it may be generated directly by the intercourse of mind with the objects owing to occult power of mind. So, for him perception is a direct immediate knowledge which cannot be derived by the medium of some other knowledge.

Gaṅgeśa rejects the theory of perception given by old Naiyāyikas. Firstly, according to him the definition is too wide, because it applies to inference and memory as forms of knowledge in which there is sense-object contact. The mind being an internal sense organ is operative and connected to the object known through memory or inference. Secondly, the definition is too narrow. It excludes the possibility of God’s omniscience which is a direct perception of all reality. If there can be no perception without senseobject contact, one can hardly talk of the divine perception, since it is not a sensuous cognition in any sense. Again, to define perception by sense-stimulation is to explain the obscurum perobscurius.^[2] In order to avoid such defects in the definition of perception given by Old-Naiyāyikas, the Navya-Naiyāyikas define perception as immediate knowledge. The nature of immediacy (sāḳsātkārivaṃ) is mutual to all perception. The visual, auditory and other types of perception are similar associated to the fact that something is immediately perceived by the knower.

Another definition of perception, provided by the Navya-Nyāya, is that “it is knowledge which is not brought about by the instrumentality of any antecedent knowledge”.^[3] The definition is applicable to all kinds of perception includes human and divine. Thus, Gaṅgeśa maintains that this is the characteristic of perception. Either it may be generated by the contact of the sense-organs with their objects or it may be generated directly by the intercourse of the mind with their objects owing to certain occult powers of the mind. For instance: in the case of visual perception, there arising a corresponding knowledge of the form “I apprehend direct”.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

pratyakṣa sākṣātkāritvaṃ lakṣaṇaṃ. Tattvacintāmaṇi

[2]:

Tattvacintāmaṇi , pp.539-43.

[3]:

jñānākaraṇa jñanamiti tu vayaṃ. Tattvacintāmaṇi , p.552.