Passage 9

In this way the own nature of a thing is established by one pramāṇa resting on each ābhāsa. And the inseparability of those ābhāsas from each other, as befits them, is ascertained by a single awareness, whose form turns within and gives life to the cluster of awarenesses that went on before, whose contents were those many known ābhāsas. And that is pramāṇa, in the form of linking, for the bare ābhāsa of oneness; but for the ābhāsas being linked it is not pramāṇa, since it grasps what was already grasped; there, for each one, the earlier is the pramāṇa. But to show the way in which the use of bodily activity, over and above the mental activity that consists in establishing the own nature of a thing, falls within the scope of pramāṇa, he says:

But that activity, at that very time, of one who seeks would be towards a svalakṣaṇa divided by other perceptions, of place and the rest.

Outward effective action, to begin with, comes from the svalakṣaṇa; and in being a svalakṣaṇa, it is the joining of the ābhāsas of space and time alone that lies closest within. And even there, being particular in form is nothing at all without parāmarśa. But through parāmarśa it comes to rest in the pramātṛ, and it lets go of being particular in form altogether, because of its oneness with the pramātṛ, whose one form is awareness and who has no tie to space and time. So everywhere, in the highest truth, there is non-duality. Yet the being particular that does shine has the svātantrya of the Supreme Lord alone for its cause, and that is what is called the śakti of māyā. There, one wants a particular effective action that a particular thing must bring about. His activity of speech, mind and body, arising at that time towards that svalakṣaṇa, the object particular in form, comes about when there is, as its cause, the “division”, that is, the difference, of the “other perceptions”, the many perceptions: of place, and, from the words “and the rest”, of time, of another form, of linking with it, and so on; and not otherwise. That activity does not come from any one pramāṇa singly, but rather from a group of pramāṇas alone. And being a group makes no sense for the other side; but for us it is understood as made of resting in one self-awareness, as was said before,

“If there were not held within”

in that passage. And this is that very joining of the pramāṇas, and what joins them is called “yukti”, as with the yukti of perfumes and the like. So activity comes only from a group of perceptions: this is the gist. Or the words go together like this: “in perceptions of place and the rest”, that is, even when the ābhāsas of place and the rest are joined, towards the svalakṣaṇa that is “undivided within”, that is, in the pramātṛ. Or the construction is: activity comes when there is, as its cause, a svalakṣaṇa divided by other perceptions of place and the rest, that is, by other ābhāsas that have become perceived. Here too, along the lines of setting out the manyness of the prameya, the group of pramāṇas, spoken of as following it, is stated to be the cause.

But is the group of pramāṇas of use only in activity that comes from perception? No, he says:

also from inference.

Activity comes not only from perception, caused by a group of pramāṇas whose form is the difference of other perceptions of place and the rest; from inference too it comes just so. There are the other perceptions: of the bare ābhāsa of smoke, of the bare ābhāsa of fire, of smoke’s never straying from the ābhāsa of fire, and of the ābhāsa of the mountain. And there is inference, a separate pramāṇa, about what lies beyond what those grasp: the cutting off of non-connection, of the kind “there is fire here”. From the group of these alone comes the activity, at that very time, of one who seeks: this is how the words connect.