Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c7.71

c7.71

(105) The rest of Jayarāśi's work is devoted entirely to the discussion of epistemological topics. He criticizes theories of the validity of knowledge put forward by the Mīmāṃsā school (pp 22–7) and the Buddhists (pp. 22–32). Almost half the work is concerned with the criticism of the validity of perception as upheld in the Nyāya (pp 2–22), by the Buddhists (pp. 32–58), in the Mīmāṃsā (pp. 58–61) and the Sāṅkhya (pp. 61–4) It is followed by the criticism of the theory of inference (anumāna) in the Nyāya (pp 64–74) and of the Buddhists (pp 83–109). The concluding section is a criticism of knowledge based on authority (śabda-, āptokti-), where the apauruṣeya- theory (pp 116–20) and the views of the grammarians (pp 120–5) are discussed. A page or two is devoted to the criticism of the arthāpatti (presumption)—theory of Mīmāṃsā, as well as upamāna (comparison) and abhāva (negation) as means of knowledge (pp. 109–13) Sambhava- (inclusion) and aitihya- (report) are dismissed in two sentences (p. 113), the former being subsumed under inference (anumāna) and the latter under scriptural tradition (āgama). The space devoted to each possibly reflects to some extent the importance attached to these theories at the period in which he wrote, but we cannot fail to observe that he begins his work with the criticism of perception and then only goes on to discuss the problems of the validity of knowledge in general Consider-ing also the space allotted to the criticisms of perception one gets the impression that the author thought that if perception, which was universally accepted and that even by some of the Materialist schools, was demolished, it goes without saying that no means of knowledge could be valid.