English
They serve only to mystify the issues in the domain of philoso¬ phical thought. These no doubt have the badge of modernism, and under Protean masks, are made to work wonders in modern psychology as well as philosophy. Sick of the repetition ad nauseam of the adjective * implicit ’—the unmistakable legacy of a Hegel-weary age—Dr. L. P. Jacks faced the issue fair and square in a significantly entit¬ led article, viz., ' Does Consciousness evolve? ’ in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. It is interesting to follow the duel between him and Prof. Muirhead as fought out in the pages of the Hibbert Journal. The lesson THE DIALECTIC OP THE VEDANTA 181 that such wordy warfares drive home to our minds is that it is not yet too late in the day for us to profit by Bacon’s classic warning against the Idola Fori, or Berkeley’s injunction of drawing aside ‘ the veil of words ’ that we may hope to see things in their true light. Samkara does not fall a victim to these seductive phrases; to play fast and loose or to dally with notions is a thing which strict intellectual honesty or a sense of ‘ the arduousness of Reality,’ as Samkara had, would never permit. What does this implicitness mean, after all, from the point of view of the spontaneity of Self which is, be it remem¬ bered, the standpoint of Epistemology? When we are discussing the prdmanyam or truth of bhedah, we must view it from the standpoint of the func¬ tioning or knowing self, and for it ‘ implicitness ’ has no meaning. The terms ‘ implicit ’ and ‘ ex¬ plicit ’ are hopelessly pinned down to an ‘ object¬ centric ’ world and can only hope to thrive therein, but they have absolutely no locus standi in the * Ego¬ centric ’ world of the Vedanta. As tom out of their proper context, and applied to the Vedanta, they acquire a metaphorical extension of meaning which renders them either irrelevant or at best misleading. Living, as it does, under the vertical glare of a full- orbed, Self-luminous caitanyam{^^i^), the Vedanta does not offer any scope for smuggling in such con¬ traband things, under cover of a shadowy penumbra, as a ‘ marginal ’ or even as a ‘ fringe ’ of conscious¬ ness. It is conceded, however, that there is the percept of the ‘ abhavah ’ or absence of its counter-entity (along with perception of the thing). 182 A SYSTEMATIC) STUDY OE THE VEDANTA although it is neither the result of a process of per¬ ception directed towards it nor the result of the implicit process of perception. It is the result of a distinct positive function of the mind, known in Vedanta, as Anupalabdhih . Secondly, the notion of ‘ difference is not logically definable. If it be real, it can either (.1.) be the essential nature of the thing which differs, or (2) an attribute (ti4r.) of it. On the first supposition, it would follow that on the apprehen¬ sion of the essential nature of a thing there would at once arise not only the judgment about its essen¬ tial nature but also judgments as to its difference from all other things. But it might be urged that even when the essential nature of a thing is appre¬ hended, the judgment ' this thing is different from other things ’ depends all the same on the remem¬ brance of its counter-entities and until this remem¬ brance functions, the judgment of difference does not come into being. But this is inadmissible ex hypothesi. He who maintains that difference is nothing but * the essential nature of a thing ’ has no right to assume a dependence on counter-entities : the judgment about difference can, on his view, depend on the counter-entities no more than the judgment about essential nature can. His view is committed to the proposition, howsoever assured, that the words ‘ jar ’ and ‘ different ’ in the judg¬ ment ‘ the jar is different,’ etc., are synonyms of each other. (2) On the second supposition, viz., that differ¬ ence is an attribute, we should have to assume that THE DIALECTIC OP THE VEDANTA 1Q3 ‘ difference ’ possesses difference (i.e., is different) from the essential nature of a thing, for otherwise it would be the same as the latter. And this latter difference would have to be viewed as an attribute of the first difference, and thus ex hypothesi different therefrom, and this would lead us to the postulation of a third difference and so on ad infinitum. Further the view of difference as an attribute would imply that difference is apprehended on the apprehension of a thing distinguished by attributes such as ‘generic character’ and so on, and at the same time that the thing thus distinguished is apprehended on the appre¬ hension of difference, and this constitutes a logical see-saw. Hence it is concluded that ‘ difference ’ (WT.) which can neither be perceived nor conceived is non-existent. The notion of bhedah came in for its final coup de grdce, from Sriharsha (about 1190 A.D.), the Vedantic Zeno. Sriharshacaryya’s famous polemi¬ cal treatise Khandanakhandakhadyam achieved for Samkara-Vedanta what Bradley’s ‘ Appearance ’ did for English Absolutism. Indeed the negative dialec¬ tic of which Sriharsha had set the classic model created a landmark in the historic continuity of the Vedantic tradition and was sedulously emulated by less known philosophic exponents of the same school. Now, according to Sriharsha,* there are four possi¬ ble ways of construing the notion of bhedah, and none of these stands scrutiny. First, it may be construed (1) as svarupabhedah (as by Khanddnakhandakhidyam,, Chap. IV. 184 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA Prabhakara and his school), according to which the ‘ jar * (qj;) differs from ‘ cloth ’ (qjj) by its very nature, so that ‘ the difference from cloth ’ must abide in the ‘ jar,’ i.e., in other words, the ‘ cloth ’ in the ‘ jar ’—which is absurd on the very face of it; (2) as anyonyabhavah (qrq’fcTW flft) or reciprocal non-existence (as by the Naiyayikas and by Kumarila Bhatta and his followers), according to which there is ‘ the absence of jar ’ (TOWra) in the ‘ cloth ’ (q^;)and vice versa, so that in accordance with the law that the perception of the non-existence of a thing presupposes its counter-entity, i.e., the existing thing, there would be the perception of ‘ jar ' (qj;) in the cloth (to*.), i- e -> they would be identical— which is contradictory to our position; (3) as Vaidharmyam ( ^q^tPf ) according to which, there is divergence or mutual exclusiveness between the ‘ jar ’ and the ‘ cloth.’ Now, if the divergence in the ‘ jar ’ be itself divergent from the divergence in the ‘ cloth,’ an infinite regress is under way; or, if the two divergences be identical, the relation of divergence itself ceases to exist; (4) as prthaktvam ( qqq^a{ ) which is supposed to explain differences of things; but here also the question arises as to whether * separateness ’ resides in different things or similar ones, or whether it is identical with the thing in which it exists or not—and thus it also is not free from inconsistencies. It is unnecessary to follow up further the trail of the dialectic of bhedah as it is to be found in Citsukha’s TattvadipiM. Thus on the rejection of the notion of bhedah the chief vantage-ground of Saipkara -Vedanta is gained. THE DIALECTIC OF THE VEDANTA 185 Now, the result so far yielded by the analysis of consciousness is the undifferenced (faf4siq^) and self-manifest character of consciousness from which follow conjointly the eternal and changeless nature of caitanyam. The argument is simple enough : if the manifestation of consciousness proceeds from its own nature, and not as conditioned by anything else, its prior non¬ existence (htwrO at any time of its being is in¬ conceivable. Nor can it be argued that it may exist and yet may not shine forth, depending, as it does, for its manifestation on association with a bodily vehicle and, by method of agreement in presence and in absence, this entails corporeality of consciousness. Samkara admits the force of this contention but concludes, unlike the materialist, that association with body is to be understood as a co-operating con¬ dition only, and that even not as an absolute and invariable one, of the manifestation of conscious ness, seeing that there is in the dreaming state when the body is inoperative, a varied cognisance.* Tn the same context, Samkara adduces this conclusion in a more telling manner from the bare fact of one¬ ness of consciousness which is corroborated furthei by the testimony of such experiences as Eecognition and Remembrance, t Although it is the argument * v'TO qfa twt ^ r * 3wiT qrf qrmMtvsifwpiqui i—Com. on V.S., III. 8. iv. iwfnnrm — Ibid. 24 186 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA from the fact of recognition (iioiftwt) which is so convincingly pressed against the ‘ psychological atomism ’ of the Vijnanavadi Buddhist, Samkara does not seem to have sufficiently recognised its im¬ portance and followed it up in its deeper epistemolo¬ gical implications with a view to their utilisation as elements in a metaphysical construction. Had he done that, he would have given an altogether different version of the primary datum of our experience, and a different analysis of the knowledge conveyed by the simple proposition— “ This is that Devadatta.” There is something more than the bare fact of ‘ feeling ’ of identity between ' That Devadatta ’ and * srct ’ ‘ This Devadatta ’)• What the recognition as sug¬ gested by this proposition implies is the cog¬ nition of identity in spite of the manifest differences conveyed by the epithets (‘fp.’ and ‘xrasj’) In fact, the full force of -Recognition remains unaccounted for, unless the knowledge conveyed herein is presented as a bona-fide judgment, as an identity-in-difference.