dge was in itself apart
from its self-revealing character Prabhakara did not enquire.

Kumarila declared that jnana (knowledge) was a movement
brought about by the activity of the self which resulted in producing
consciousness (_jnatata_) of objective things. Jnana itself
cannot be perceived, but can only be inferred as the movement
necessary for producing the jnatata or consciousness of things.
Movement with Kumarila was not a mere atomic vibration, but
was a non-sensuous transcendent operation of which vibration

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[Footnote 1: Sa@mkhya considered nirvikalpa as the dim knowledge of the
first moment of consciousness, which, when it became clear at the next
moment, was called savikalpa.]

417

was sometimes the result. Jnana was a movement and not the
result of causal operation as Nyaya supposed. Nyaya would
not also admit any movement on the part of the self, but it
would hold that when the self is possessed of certain qualities,
such as desire, etc., it becomes an instrument for the accomplishment
of a physical movement. Kumarila accords the same
self-validity to knowledge that Prabhakara gives. Later knowledge
by experience is not endowed with any special quality
which should decide as to the validity of the knowledge of the
previous movement. For what is called sa@mvadi or later testimony
of experience is but later knowledge and nothing more [Footnote ref 1]. The
self is not revealed in the knowledge of external objects, but we
can know it by a mental perception of self-consciousness. It is
the movement of this self in presence of certain collocating circumstances
leading to cognition of things that is called jnana [Footnote ref 2].
Here Kumarila distinguishes knowledge as movement from knowledge
as objective consciousness. Knowledge as movement was
beyond sense perception and could only be inferred.

The idealistic tendency of Vijnanavada Buddhism, Sa@mkhya,
and Mima@msa was manifest in its attempt at establishing the unique
character of knowledge as being that with which alone we are in
touch. But Vijnanavada denied the external world, and thereby
did violence to the testimony of knowledge. Sa@mkhya admitted
the external world but created a gulf between the content of knowledge
and pure intelligence; Prabhakara ignored this difference,
and was satisfied with the introspective assertion that knowledge
was such a unique thing that it revealed