Nyaya Ratnamala of Parthasarathi Misra 4.4.p19

4.4.p19

By the words "of whatever kind" and "of such a kind", it is shown that what is deficient in form compared to the form observed in an exemplar possesses neither the status of an inferential sign nor the status of what is signified by the sign. For ordinary people do not infer fire from a pigeon or the like merely through the property of having a whitish color, without the property of being smoke. Nor does an alteration of grass, which is invariably concomitant with hot fire, when observed in snow, cause one to infer a non-hot fire when heat is sublated because of a contradiction with the coldness apprehended by perception. And investigators must follow the operation of means of valid cognition in accordance with the ordinary world, not in contradiction to it. By this, the fallacious nature of all non-instigating reasons has been demonstrated. But a form other than that must be accepted without deficiency. Therefore, it is because of the property of being violence endowed with the property of being prohibited that concomitance with the property of being demerit is observed in the killing of a Brahmin and the like; and it is not observed as an inferential indicator of that [demerit] merely through the property of being violence without the property of being prohibited, since concomitance with the property of being demerit is observed in approaching the wife of a teacher and so forth [even without violence]. Just as concomitance of a student having the duty of study and the like with a preceptor is repeatedly understood, and so one does not infer an instructor merely from [a person being] a student; likewise, the concomitance of the sons of Devadatta with dark complexion is caused by the particular food, drink, and so forth consumed at the time of embryonic development, and therefore, in the absence of that, one does not infer the dark complexion of another son of his merely from the property of being Devadatta's son. By this, the inference that bodies, trees, plants, and the like have an agent possessing apprehension, like a pot and the like, on the grounds of being characterized by a structural arrangement, is refuted. To explain: it is only in the case of those things