Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/489

 x] Inference 473 etc. and veiled these forms. Perception leads to the tern porary and the partial breaking of the veil over specific ajllana forms so that there is a temporary union of the cit as underlying the subject and the object through the broken veil. Perception on the subjective side is thus defined as the union or undifferentia- tion (abheda) of the subjective consciousness with the objective consciousness com prehending the sensible objects through the speci fic mental states (tattadindriyayogyaviaytivacchillnacaitanyti- bhi1l1wtvam tattadiiktiraviaytivacchillnajrztillasya tattadamse pra- tyakatvam). This union in perception means that the objective has at that moment no separate existence from the subjective consciousness of the perceiver. The consciousness manifesting through the antalJkaral)a is called jIvasaki. Inference (anulIltina), according to Vedanta, is made by our notion of concomitance (vytiptijiitilla) between two things, acting through specific past impressions (sa1!lsktira). Thus when I see smoke on a hill, my previous notion of the concomitance of smoke with fire becomes roused as a subconscious impression, and I infer that there is fire on the hill. My knowledge of the hill and the smoke is by direct perception. The notion of concomitance revived in the subconscious only establishes the connection be- tween the smoke and the fire. The notion of concomitance is generated by the perception of two things together, when no case of the failure of concomitance is known (vyablliCllrtijlitina) regarding the subject. The notion of concomitance being alto- gether subjective, the Vedantist does not emphasize the necessity of perceiving the concomitance in a large number of cases (bhz/.- yodarsanalll sakrddarsallalll veti viseo 1ztidal'a?liya(1). Vedanta is not anxious to establish any material validity for the inference, but only subjective and formal validity. A single perception of concomitance may in certain cases generate the notion of the concomitance of one thing with another when no contradictory instance is known. It is immaterial with the Vedanta whether this concomitance is experienced in one case or in hundreds of cases. The method of agreement in presence is the only form of con- comitance (a1lvayavytipti) that the Vedanta allows. So the Vedanta discards all the other kinds of inference that N yaya supported, viz. allvaya'uyatircki (by joining agreement in pre- sence with agreement in absence), kevaltil1Va}'i (by universal agree- ment where no test could be applied of agreement in absence) and