Sarvadarshanasangraha 10.44

10.44

nīlaṃ nabha itivad bhrāntir evety alaṃ vṛddhavīvadhayā/ ata eva nāropitarūpaṃ tamaḥ/ adhiṣṭhānapratyayam antareṇāropāyogāt/ bāhyālokasahakārirahitasya cakṣuṣo rūpārope sāmarthyānupalambhāc ca/ na cāyam acākṣuṣaḥ pratyayaḥ/ tadanuvidhānasyānanyathāsiddhatvāt/ ata eva nālokajñānābhāvaḥ/ abhāvasya pratiyogigrāhakendriyagrāhyatvaniyamena mānasatvaprasaṅgāt/ tasmād ālokābhāva eva tamaḥ/

But you may ask, "How can you say that darkness is destitute of qualities, when it is perceived as possessed of the dark blue of the tamāla blossom?" We reply, that this is merely an error, as when men say that the [colourless] sky is blue. But enough of this onslaught on ancient sages.[40] (b.) Hence it follows that darkness cannot have its colour imposed upon it, since you cannot have an imposition of colour without supposing some substratum to receive it;[41] and again, we cannot conceive the eye as capable of imposing a colour when deprived of the concurrent cause, the external light. Nor can we accept that it is an impression independent of the eye [i.e., produced by the internal sense, mind], because the concurrence of the eye is not a superfluous but an indispensable condition to its being produced. Nor can you maintain that "absence or non-existence (abhāva[42]) is incapable of being expressed by affirmative tense affixes [and, therefore, as we do use such phrases as tenebræ oriuntur, darkness cannot be a mere non-existence"]; because your assertion is too broad, as it would include such cases of non-existence as a mundane collapse, destruction, inattention,[43] &c. [and yet we all know that men do speak of any of these things as past, present, or future, and yet all are cases of abhāva].

(c.) Hence darkness cannot be the absence of the cognition of light, since, by the well-known rule that that organ which perceives a certain object can also perceive its absence, it would follow that darkness would be perceived by the mind [since it is the mind which perceives cognitions].[44] Hence we conclude that the fourth or remaining opinion must be the true one, viz., that darkness is only the absence of light. And it need not be objected that it is very difficult to account for the attribution to non-existence of the qualities of existence, for we all see that the quality happiness is attributed to the absence of pain, and the idea of separation is connected with the absence of conjunction. And you need not assert that "this absence of light must be the object of a cognition produced by the eye in dependence on light, since it is the absence of an object possessing colour,[45] as we see in the case of a jar's absence," because by the very rule on which you rely, viz., that that on which the eye depends to perceive an object, it must also depend on to perceive that object's absence, it follows that as there is no dependence of the eye on light to perceive light, it need not depend thereon to perceive this light's absence.