Argument
IPVV — V3-C ARGUMENT MAP (the pramāṇavimarśa: what the valid-means is, kārikās 1–2)
MACHINE_DRAFT · 3 premises
Question. What is a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa), and what is its result (pramiti / phala)? The whole vimarśa (17 sūtras) is devoted to the *relation* (sambandha) between the known and the knower. Abhinava opens it by asking what counts as a pramāṇa and what it produces.
Issue. **The question:** What is a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa), and what is its result (pramiti /
phala)? The whole vimarśa (17 sūtras) is devoted to the *relation* (sambandha) between the known and
the knower. Abhinava opens it by asking what counts as a pramāṇa and what it produces.
The frame (lines 2062–2086): the relation is of two kinds — (a) the known/known-relation
(jñāpya-jñāpaka), resting in the inert-and-conscious, and (b) the cause/effect relation, resting in
the inert. The first is the māna/neya (measure/measured) relation; all establishment of things depends
on the pramāṇa. So this vimarśa determines the pramāṇa/prameya dealing, in 17 sūtras: two (kārikās 1–2)
on the nature of the pramāṇa and its fruit; ten on the pramāṇa's operation per-appearance (not resting
in the own-marker thing alone); one on erroneous cognition; one on the prameya in the īśvara-view;
three on the pramāṇa/prameya/fruit division and the vyavahāra.
Premises
Kārikā 1
> The object, through whose force "this, of-this-form, thus" it stands — that is the pramāṇa; and it,
> too, is self-appearance (svābhāsa), a new rise (abhinavodaya).
Kārikā 2
> It, the inner-thus-reflexive-awareness-own (antaḥ-stathā-vimarśātmā), in the place-time-and-the-rest
> un-divided — in the one-utterance-object, the cognition (miti) is the un-broken (abādhitā) cognition
> of the thing.
The argument
1. **What a pramāṇa is, in the world's ordinary sense:** the external object (the blue) and the inner
(pleasure), *by whose force* the cognition stands firm within its fixed limit — as "this" (by its
own form) and "of-this-form" (by some other qualifying dharma, e.g. eternality). That is the
pramāṇa, as commonly said.
2. **But then the discriminator reflects:** the object does not stand by its own power alone — for
then the blue would not appear *to me* rather than *to Caitra*. So it stands by *another's* power.
3. **That "other" must be conscious:** if it were inert, it would be like a blind man showing the way
to a blind man. So the other is of the nature of consciousness (saṃvidrūpa).
4. **But mere consciousness is not enough:** an un-differentiated consciousness could no
Unresolved. 1. The pā. vā. 3.308 and siddhapāda quotes anchor the pramāṇa/fruit relation; their exact force is
cited, not re-derived here.
2. The "śūnyādyupādhi-saṅkoca" — the contraction by the void-and-the-rest limiting conditions — is
the load-bearing mechanism; rendered as such, but the full list of upādhis (beyond śūnya/deha/prāṇa)
is not enumerated in this excerpt.
Tension: IPVV-recognition-formulations-vs-mepit
Referenced by essays (4)
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