Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s10.2

v2.c24.s10.2

Pramā, or valid knowledge, is distinguished from doubt (saṃśaya) and erroneous knowledge (viparyaya), where the ideas do not lead to successful action. Illusions and hallucinations fail to realise their ends, i.e. do not fulfil the expectations roused by them. We become conscious of error when the demands of our ideal past are not met by the present. We see a white object and take it to be silver, pick it up and find it to be a piece of shell. The new experience of the shell contradicts the expectation of silver. According to the Nyāya, all error is subjective. Vātsyāyana says: “What is set aside by true knowledge is the wrong apprehension, not the object.”³ Uddyotakara observes, taking the mirage as an instance, “the object all the while remains what it actually is: In regard to the flickering rays of the sun, when there arises the cognition of water, there is no error in the object: it is not that the rays are not rays, nor that the flickering is not flickering: the error lies in the cognition: as it is the cognition which instead of appearing as the cognition of the flickering rays, appears as the cognition of water, i.e. as the cognition of a thing as something which it is not.”⁴ Water is not absolutely non-existent, as a flower in the sky, but is not existent here and now, though it is imagined to exist. The rays are the cause of the illusion, though not the object of the illusory perception of water. The realism of the Nyāya is here slightly modified, since it cannot account for the rise of illusions on the view that the world of experienced things with all their peculiar qualities exists independently of any relation to the experiencing subject. All erroneous cognition has some basis in reality. Vātsyāyana says: “No wrong apprehension is entirely baseless.”¹ Error is the apprehension of an object as other than what it is. This view of anyathākhyāti is supported not only by the Nyāya but also by the Jaina logicians, Kumārila and Rāmānuja.