Knowledge reveals our own self as a knowing subject as well as the objects that are known by us.  We have no reason to suppose (like the Buddhists) that all knowledge by perception of external objects is in the first instance indefinite and indeterminate, and that all our determinate notions of form, colour, size and other characteristics of the thing are not directly given in our perceptual experience, but are derived only by imagination (utprek@sa), and that therefore true perceptual knowledge only certifies the validity of the indefinite and indeterminate crude sense data (nirvikalpa jnana).  Experience shows that true knowledge on the one hand reveals us as subjects or knowers, and on the other hand gives a correct sketch of the external objects in all the diversity of their characteristics.  It is for this reason that knowledge is our immediate and most prominent means of serving our purposes.

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[Footnote 1:  Prama@na-naya-tattvalokala@mkara, p. 26.]

[Footnote 2:  See Pari@sa-mukha-sutra, II. 9, and its v@rtti, and also the concluding v@rtti of ch.  II.]

183

Of course knowledge cannot directly and immediately bring to us the good we want, but since it faithfully communicates to us the nature of the objects around us, it renders our actions for the attainment of good and the avoidance of evil, possible; for if knowledge did not possess these functions, this would have been impossible.  The validity of knowledge thus consists in this, that it is the most direct, immediate, and indispensable means for serving our purposes.  So long as any knowledge is uncontradicted it should be held as true.  False knowledge is that which represents things in relations in which they do not exist.  When a rope in a badly lighted place gives rise to the illusion of a snake, the illusion consists in taking the rope to be a snake, i.e. perceiving a snake where it does not exist.  Snakes exist and ropes also exist, there is no untruth in that [Footnote ref 1].  The error thus consists in this, that the snake is perceived where the rope exists.  The perception of a snake under relations and environments in which it was not then existing is what is meant by error here.  What was at first perceived as a snake was later on contradicted and thus found false.  Falsehood therefore consists in the misrepresentation of objective facts in experience.  True knowledge therefore is that which gives such a correct and faithful representation of its object as is never afterwards found to be contradicted.  Thus knowledge when imparted directly in association with the organs in sense-perception is very clear, vivid, and distinct, and is called perceptional (pratyak@sa); when attained otherwise the knowledge is not so clear and vivid and is then called non-perceptional (parok@sa [Footnote ref 2]).

Theory of Perception.