Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/475

 x] Mfma1?ZSa and Nyaya Objections 459 the true, that is at the root of illusion. It is the antal)karaI)a taken as the self-luminous self that reflects itself in the cit as the notion of the ego. Just as when we say that the iron ball (red hot) burns, there are two entities of the ball and the fire fused into one, so here also when I say U I perceive" there are two distinct elements of the self as consciousness and the mind or antal)karaI)a fused into one. The part or aspect associated with sorrow, materiality, and changefulness represents the antal)karaI)a, whereas that which appears as the unchangeable perceiving consciousness is the self J'hus the notion of ego contains two parts, one real and the other unreal. We remember that this is distinctly that which Prabhakara sought to repudiate. Prabhakara did not consider the self to be self-luminous, and held that such is the threefold nature of thought (tripuli), that it at once reveals the knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the self He further said that the analogy of the red-hot iron ball did not hold, for the iron ball and the fire are separately experienced, but the self and the antal).karaI)a are never separately experienced, and we can never say that these two are really different and only have an illusory appearance of a seeming unity. Perception (mmbhava) is like a light which illuminates both the object and the self, and like it does not require the assistance of anything else for the fulfilling of its purpose. But the Vedanta object to this saying that according to Prabhakara's supposition it is impossible to discover any relation between the self and the knowledge. If knowledge can be regarded as revealing itself, the self may as well be held to be self-luminous; the self and the knoledge are indeed one and the same. Kumarila thinks this thought (a1lllb/lava) to be a movement, Nyaya and Prabhakara as a quality of the selP. But if it were a movement like other move- ments,it could not affect itself as illumination. Ifitwereasubstance and atomic in size, it would only manifest a small portion of a thing, if all-pervasive then it wbuld illuminate everything, if of medium size it would depend on its parts for its own 1 According to Nyaya the iitman is conscious only through association with con- sciousness, but it is not consciousness (cit). Consciousness is associated with it only as a result of suitable collocations. Thus Nyiiyanzaiijari in refuting the doctrine of self-luminosity (svaprakiifa) says (p. 432) sacetanaicitii yogiittadyogma vinii jatJa!z niirthiivabhiisiidallyaddhi caitanya/!l nama 11lanmaJ;.e.