Classical Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Sankara does not maintain that Ātman is created by Brahman.

For Sankara's Advaita, Atman is Brahman: the self is pure, eternal consciousness, uncreated and identical with the ultimate reality, as the Upanishadic sayings 'tat tvam asi' and 'aham brahmasmi' declare. Nothing can create Atman, since there is nothing other than it.

The other three are his doctrines. Atman and Brahman are identical; the jiva, the individual soul, is in reality Brahman, its separateness being due to ignorance; and the world (jagat) is a superimposition (adhyasa) on Brahman, like a snake on a rope.

Answer: C

The principle not in Rāmānuja's Tattvatraya is Time (Kāla).

The Tattvatraya, the 'three reals' of Viṣiṣṭādvaita, are cit (conscious individual souls), acit (non-conscious matter) and Īśvara (God), with souls and matter forming the body of God.

Time is accepted in Rāmānuja's ontology, but as one of the non-conscious substances, so it falls under acit rather than standing as a separate principle of the triad. Spirit, matter and God are exactly the three that the doctrine names.

Answer: B

For Śaṅkara the world is real only as Vyāvahārika Sattā, empirical or practical reality.

Advaita distinguishes three levels of being: pāramārthika (ultimate reality, which belongs to Brahman alone), vyāvahārika (the empirical world of everyday experience and action, valid until liberating knowledge) and prātibhāsika (illusory appearances such as the snake seen in a rope).

The world is not ultimately real, since it is sublated by knowledge of Brahman, so Pāramārthika and 'both' are wrong. Nor is it simply unreal, because it works in practice and is not sublated within ordinary experience, so 'neither' is wrong too.

Answer: B

In Jaina philosophy a substance has guṇa and paryāya, qualities and modes.

Umāsvāti's Tattvārtha Sūtra defines substance as that which possesses qualities and modes (guṇa-paryāyavad dravyam). Qualities are the permanent attributes that stay with the substance; modes are its changing states, which arise and pass away. This is how the Jainas hold that reality is both permanent and changing.

Sāmānya (universal) and viśeṣa (particularity) are separate categories (padārthas) of the Vaiśeṣika system, not Jaina attributes of substance, so the options pairing them are wrong.

Answer: C

The Vaiśeṣika system advocates 9 substances.

They are earth, water, fire and air (made of atoms), and ākāśa (ether), time (kāla), space (dik), self (ātman) and mind (manas). Substance (dravya) is the first of the Vaiśeṣika categories, the substratum of qualities and actions.

Six is the number of categories (padārthas) in Kaṇāda's original scheme (substance, quality, action, universal, particularity and inherence), to which later writers added non-existence as a seventh. Neither 3 nor 10 is a Vaiśeṣika count of substances.

Answer: A

The cause inseparably connected with its effect is the Samavāyi Kāraṇa (inherent cause).

In Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika the inherent or material cause is the substance in which the effect inheres by samavāya, the inseparable relation: the threads are the samavāyi kāraṇa of the cloth, which exists in them.

The asamavāyi (non-inherent) cause is a quality or action that inheres in the material cause and helps produce the effect, such as the conjunction of the threads. The nimitta (efficient) cause is external, such as the weaver and the loom. 'Pratiyogi' (counter-positive) belongs to the theory of absence, not to the kinds of cause.

Answer: C

Abhihitānvayavāda maintains (i), (ii) and (iv).

This is the theory of sentence meaning of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's school of Mīmāṁsā: the words first express (abhihita) their own separate meanings, and these meanings are then connected (anvaya), through expectancy, compatibility and proximity, to yield the meaning of the sentence. So the sentence meaning is built from the meanings of its component words.

Statement (iii), that words function only to convey the meaning of a sentence, expresses the rival Prābhākara theory, anvitābhidhānavāda, in which words express meanings already connected in a sentence. That rules out the options including (iii).

Answer: D

According to Anyathākhyāti, the object of error is elsewhere and is real.

This is the Nyāya theory of error. When a rope is seen as a snake, the snake is not unreal: it is a real snake existing elsewhere, perceived through a past impression and wrongly presented here. Error is apprehending a real thing otherwise (anyathā) than it is.

That the object of error is unreal is the Mādhyamika asatkhyāti; that it is only a mental idea projected outward is the Yogācāra ātmakhyāti. Saying merely that it is real omits the essential 'elsewhere', which distinguishes anyathākhyāti from theories like Rāmānuja's satkhyāti.

Answer: C

The true sentences are (i) and (ii).

(i) The Buddhists hold svataḥ aprāmāṇya: knowledge is invalid by itself and becomes valid only when confirmed from outside (parataḥ prāmāṇya). (ii) The Naiyāyikas hold that both validity and invalidity are extrinsic, known through further tests such as successful action.

(iii) is false. Prabhākara, like the other Mīmāṁsakas, holds that validity is intrinsic (svataḥ prāmāṇya); invalidity is extrinsic, detected by a later contradicting cognition. So the options including (iii) are wrong, and 'only (i)' and 'only (ii)' each leave out a true sentence.

Answer: A

The correct match is a-2, b-1, c-4, d-3.

Each pair marks the pramāṇas that distinguish a school's list:

• (a) Pratyakṣa and anumāna: the Bauddhas accept only these two.
• (b) Anumāna and śabda: Sāṅkhya accepts perception, inference and testimony.
• (c) Śabda and upamāna: Nyāya adds comparison (upamāna) to the three, making four.
• (d) Upamāna and anupalabdhi: the Bhāṭṭa Pūrvamīmāṁsā accepts six, including comparison and non-apprehension (anupalabdhi).

The other codes misplace these: non-apprehension as a separate pramāṇa is distinctive of Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsā (and Advaita), not of Nyāya or the Bauddhas.