Part 7 - The nature of knowledge

All knowledge involves the knovver, the known object, and the knowledge at the same identical moment. All knowledge whether perceptual, inferential or of any other kind must necessarily reveal the self or the knower directly. Thus as in all knowledge the self is directly and immediately perceived, all knowledge may be regarded as perception from the point of view of self. The division of the pramāṇas as pratyakṣa (perception), anumāna (inference), etc. is from the point of view of the objects of knowledge with reference to the varying modes in which they are brought within the purview of knowledge.

The self itself however has no illumining or revealing powers, for then even in deep sleep we could have knowledge, for the self is present even then, as is proved by the remembrance of dreams. It is knowledge (saṃvid) that reveals by its very appearance both the self, the knower, and the objects. It is generally argued against the self-illuminative character of knowledge that all cognitions are of the forms of the objects they are said to reveal; and if they have the same form we may rather say that they have the same identical reality too. The Mīmāṃsā answer to these objections is this, that if the cognition and the cognized were not different from one another, they could not have been felt as such, and we could not have felt that it is by cognition that we apprehend the cognized objects.

The cognition (saṃvedana) of a person simply means that such a special kind of quality (dharma) has been manifested in the self by virtue of which his active operation with reference to a certain object is favoured or determined, and the object of cognition is that with reference to which the active operation of the self has been induced. Cognitions are not indeed absolutely formless, for they have the cognitional character by which things are illumined and manifested.

Cognition has no other character than this, that it illumines and reveals objects. The things only are believed to have forms and only such forms as knowledge reveal to us about them. Even the dream cognition is with reference to objects that were perceived previously, and of which the impressions were left in the mind and were aroused by the unseen agency (adṛṣṭa). Dream cognition is thus only a kind of remembrance of that which was previously experienced. Only such of the impressions of cognized objects are roused in dreams as can beget just that amount of pleasurable or painful experience, in accordance with the operation of adṛṣṭa, as the person deserves to have in accordance with his previous merit or demerit.

The Prabhākara Mīmāṃsā, in refuting the arguments of those who hold that our cognitions of objects are themselves cognized by some other cognition, says that this is not possible, since we do not experience any such double cognition and also because it would lead us to a regrcssus ad infinitum , for if a second cognition is necessary to interpret the first, then that would require a third and so on. If a cognition could be the object of another cognition, then it could not be self-valid. The cognition is not of course unknown to us, but that is of course because it is self-cognized, and reveals itself to us the moment it reveals its objects. From the illumination of objects also we can infer the presence of this self-cognizing knowledge. But it is only its presence that is inferred and not the cognition itself, for inference can only indicate the presence of an object and not in the form in which it can be apprehended by perception (pratyakṣa).

Prabhākara draws a subtle distinction between perceptuality (saṃvedyatva) and being object of knowledge (prameyatva). A thing can only be apprehended (saṃvedyate) by perception, whereas inference can only indicate the presence of an object without apprehending the object itself. Our cognition cannot be apprehended by any other cognition. Inference can only indicate the presence or existence of knowledge but cannot apprehend the cognition itself^[1].

Kumārila also agrees with Prabhākara in holding that perception is never the object of another perception and that it ends in the direct apprehensibility of the object of perception. But he says that every perception involves a relationship between the perceiver and the perceived, wherein the perceiver behaves as the agent whose activity in grasping the object is known as cognition. This is indeed different from the Prabhākara view, that in one manifestation of knowledge the knower, the known, and the knowledge, are simultaneously illuminated (the doctrine of tripuṭīpratyakṣa)^[2].

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See Prabhākaramīmātnsñ, by Dr Gañgānātha Jhā.

[2]:

loc. cit. pp. 26-28.