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It is customary to define perception in terms of sensefunctioning. The ordinary idea is that perception as a form of knowledge is essentially dependent for its origin and distinctive character on the stimulation of the sense-organs. There is a departure from this common usage in the definition of pratyaksa or perception given by the Advaita Vedanta, the Prabhakara Mimamsa and the Jaina system. According to the Prabhakaras, perception is the direct cognition of an object. It is the intuitive or immediate knowledge that we may have of the subject and object of knowledge or of knowledge itself.' For the Jainas too, pratyaksa is the direct and immediate knowledge of objects. It is of two kinds: mukhya or the primary and samvyavaharika or the practical. The first is quite independent of the mind and the senses. While the origin of the second is conditioned by the mind and the senses, its essence lies in the direct cognition of some object. Hence perception is in its essential nature a direct knowledge of objects." In the Advaita Vedanta, perception as a pramana is the unique cause (karana) of perception as a form of valid knowledge (prama). In this sense, the sense organs constitute the karana or the unique cause of perceptual cognition. The latter (i.e. pratyaksa prama), however, is defined as immediate and time- . less knowledge (caitanya). Such immediate knowledge is the self itself, because it is only in the self that there is pure immediacy of knowledge. The senses are the karana or the unique cause of perception as immediate knowledge in so far as the mental modification (antahkaranavrtti), which manifests it (i.e. caitanya), is due to the function of the sense organs. What takes place in perception is this. The antahkarana or mind goes out Prakaranapancika, ] Saksatpratitih pratyaksam meyamatrpramasu sa, PP. 51-52. 2 Visadajnanasvabhavami pratyaksam, avyavadhanena pramanantaranirapeksataya pratibhasanam vastuno'nubhavo vaisadyam vijnanasyeti, etc., Prameyakamala-martanda, pp. 57-67.

through the sense organ which is in contact with a present perceptible object and becomes so modified as to assume the form of the object itself. The mind being a material principle, it is quite possible for it to move and attain the dimension of the object of perception. Perception is the immediate knowledge in which the mental modification is non-different (abhinna) from the object and is lit up by the self's light. The immediacy of perception, however, is not due to its being produced by sensestimulation. If that were so, then inference would have been as immediate as perception, since, according to the Naiyayikas, the mind as an internal sense is operative in inference. On the other hand, there cannot be any immediate knowledge by intuition, because it is not due to the senses. The connection of perception with sense-stimulation is more accidental than essential.' 3 That there may be immediate knowledge without any stimulation of sense is admitted by many leading philosophers of the West. Any knowledge by acquaintance, Russell thinks, gives us a direct knowledge of things. "Direct cognition," says Ewing, "would be quite possible without direct perception." With regard to perception, however, it is generally held in European philosophy that it is the cognition of an object through sensations. Here the process of perception begins with the action of an external object. The object produces certain modifications in the sense organ and the nervous system and, through these, gives rise to a mental image corresponding to itself. In the Advaita Vedanta the order of the process is reversed. The mind goes out through sense and reaches the object, and there becomes literally changed into the form of the object. On this view, the perplexing question of the correspondence of a mental image to the object, of which it is the image, does not at all arise. The direct apprehension of objects in perception is thus better explained by the Vedanta. 1 Vedanta-paribhasa, Chapter I. 2 The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter V. 3 Mind, April, 1930, p. 140.

t goes further than this and maintains that the essence of perception lies, not in its being produced by sense-object contact, but in the immediacy (saksattvam) of the knowledge given by it.