Perception, pratyakṣa (प्रत्यक्ष)

Summary

Perception is the means the lists most often share, and they do not mean the same cut by it. Nyāya (न्याय)'s perception arises from a sense meeting an object. Sāṅkhya (साङ्ख्य)'s is a determining of each object. Yoga counts it among the activities of the mind. Jain perception, in the Tattvārtha (तत्त्वार्थ) reading sat here, is the knowledge that does not go through a sense. Cārvāka (चार्वाक), as the reports give it, stops at perception and refuses the rest. This page keeps those cuts apart and points at the lines.

नेपालीमा

प्रत्यक्ष सूचीहरूले प्रायः साझा मान्ने साधन हो, र तिनले एउटै विभाजन भन्दैनन्। न्यायको प्रत्यक्ष इन्द्रिय र वस्तुको भेटबाट उब्जिन्छ। सांख्यको चाहिँ हरेक विषयको निश्चय हो। योगले यसलाई मनका वृत्तिमा गन्छ। यहाँ प्रस्तुत गरिएको तत्त्वार्थ पढाइमा जैन प्रत्यक्ष इन्द्रिय नभई हुने ज्ञान हो। रिपोर्टहरूमा दिइएको चार्वाक प्रत्यक्षमा रोकिन्छ र बाँकी सबै अस्वीकार गर्छ। यो पृष्ठले ती विभाजन अलग राख्छ र पङ्क्ति देखाउँछ।

prati (प्रति) is before, toward. akṣa (अक्ष) is the eye. pratyakṣa (प्रत्यक्ष) is what stands before the eye, and the systems that define it stretch it to the other senses. The disagreement is what else the word is asked to cover.

न्याय Nyāya

Nyāya (न्याय) 1.1.4 defines it as a knowing arisen from the contact of sense and object. The knowing is not fixed by a verbal label, it does not stray onto the wrong thing, and it is a decision. Doubt is a later topic, so a waver stays out of this definition. The name itself is in the list at 1.1.3.

nirvikalpaka (निर्विकल्पक) and savikalpaka (सविकल्पक)

Two later names divide a perception by whether a concept has entered. nirvikalpaka (निर्विकल्पक) is indeterminate perception. The object is grasped, and no name, no class, and no 'this is that' has been joined to it. savikalpaka (सविकल्पक) is determinate perception. The same contact yields 'this is a pot,' a cognition that carries a concept. vikalpa (विकल्प) is a conceptual construction. nir (निर्) is the privative. sa (स) is 'with.'

Nyāya (न्याय) 1.1.4 does not recite these two names. avyapadeśyam (अव्यपदेश्यम्) on that line is 'not fixed by a verbal label.' vyavasāyātmakam (व्यवसायात्मकम्) is 'a decision.' Later Nyāya (न्याय) reads the first mark as the room left for the indeterminate grasp, and the second as the mark that keeps the determinate grasp inside perception. Both arise from the contact of sense and object, so Nyāya (न्याय) counts both as pratyakṣa (प्रत्यक्ष). A cognition that can take a word is still perception, on this account, when the contact is what produced it.

Dignāga (दिग्नाग) and Dharmakīrti (धर्मकीर्ति) draw the line in the other place. Their formula is kalpanāpoḍha (कल्पनापोढ): perception is free of kalpanā (कल्पना), the joining of a name or a class to the particular. On that account the indeterminate grasp is perception, and Nyāya (न्याय)'s savikalpaka (सविकल्पक) is an imputation. Their manuals are a later school. No verse of those manuals is in this book, and none is supplied here. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (मूलमध्यमककारिका) and the Viṃśatikā (विंशतिका) stay the books they are.

Advaita (अद्वैत), for a jar or a cloth, counts both as perception. Determinate perception of a jar remains perception. The same word nirvikalpaka (निर्विकल्पक) has a further use in this school: the knowledge of Brahman (ब्रह्मन्), in which knower, knowing, and known are not laid out as three. That use is the work of the Advaita pages. It is another use of the word, and it is not this division of a sense-cognition.

Sāṅkhya (साङ्ख्य) and Yoga (योग)

Kārikā (कारिका) 5 says perception is prativiṣayādhyavasāya (प्रतिविषयाध्यवसाय), a determining aimed at each object. Kārikā (कारिका) 4 has already counted it as one of three means.

Yoga (योग) 1.7 names perception and adds no second definition. Yoga (योग) 1.6 has put pramāṇa (प्रमाण) among the five activities of the mind. Perception here is a vṛtti (वृत्ति), something the mind does. The work of that book is the stilling of those activities.

वैशेषिक Vaiśeṣika

Kaṇāda (कणाद)'s opening is the categories, not Nyāya (न्याय)'s four. 9.2.1 names knowing by a mark. 10.1.3 names perception beside the mark as the two routes by which pleasure and pain arise. tayoḥ (तयोः) in that line is the pair pleasure and pain, from 10.1.1.

चार्वाक Cārvāka

The reports that survive name perception as the means. Inference is refused, on those reports, because the tie between a sign and what it signifies is not itself seen in the new case. No Bṛhaspati (बृहस्पति) sūtra (सूत्र) is in hand. The Cārvāka (चार्वाक) page says that, and this book does not invent the sūtra (सूत्र).

Jaina (जैन), and the Buddhist pramāṇa (प्रमाण) school

Ordinary seeing is on the parokṣa (परोक्ष) side of the Jaina (जैन) cut. The Jain page is the place to learn that, from 1.11 and 1.12.

Dignāga (दिग्नाग) and Dharmakīrti (धर्मकीर्ति) count two means. Perception, for them, is the indeterminate grasp named above, kalpanāpoḍha (कल्पनापोढ). The determinate cognition is kalpanā (कल्पना). Their manuals are a later school, and no verse of those manuals is supplied here.