on between the shaped buddhi and
the intelligence, and that being so consciousness was almost like
a physical event. With Sa@mkhya however so far as the content
and the shape manifested in consciousness were concerned it was
indeed a physical event, but so far as the pure intelligizing element
of consciousness was concerned it was a wholly transcendent
affair beyond the scope and province of physics. The rise of
consciousness was thus at once both transcendent and physical.

The Mima@msist Prabhakara agreed with Nyaya in general
as regards the way in which the objective world and sense contact

416

induced knowledge in us. But it regarded knowledge as a
unique phenomenon which at once revealed itself, the knower
and the known. We are not concerned with physical collocations,
for whatever these may be it is knowledge which reveals
things--the direct apprehension that should be called the prama@na.
Prama@na in this sense is the same as pramiti or prama,
the phenomenon of apprehension. Prama@na may also indeed
mean the collocations so far as they induce the prama. For
prama or right knowledge is never produced, it always exists,
but it manifests itself differently under different circumstances.
The validity of knowledge means the conviction or the specific
attitude that is generated in us with reference to the objective
world. This validity is manifested with the rise of knowledge,
and it does not await the verdict of any later experience in the
objective field (_sa@mvadin_). Knowledge as nirvikalpa (indeterminate)
means the whole knowledge of the object and not merely
a non-sensible hypothetical indeterminate class-notion as Nyaya
holds. The savikalpa (determinate) knowledge only re-establishes
the knowledge thus formed by relating it with other objects as
represented by memory [Footnote ref 1].

Prabhakara rejected the Sa@mkhya conception of a dual element
in consciousness as involving a transcendent intelligence (_cit_) and
a material part, the buddhi; but it regarded consciousness as an
unique thing which by itself in one flash represented both the
knower and the known. The validity of knowledge did not depend
upon its faithfulness in reproducing or indicating (_pradars'akatva_)
external objects, but upon the force that all direct apprehension
(_anubhuti_) has of prompting us to action in the external world;
knowledge is thus a complete and independent unit in all its
self-revealing aspects. But what the knowle