Upamana Pramana (Comparison) and Genus and Species.

 Does the pramana of upamana translated as ‘comparison’ start somewhat in midstream?  We are immediately given the concept of genus and species, the cow in this case so in essence we already have the power to discover genus and species natively.  Taking the single example of the ‘gavaya’ ( bos gaurus) we can be immediately aware that it must be a member of a species and with that awareness comes the knowledge of differentiation which makes a species.  Sharing the same genus as the cow (bos Taurus) is a likely presumption.  

There is an element of the problem of universals lurking beneath the surface of Upamana:

This (upamana) is not possible through perception, for then the cow’s form is not in contact with the eyes.

We only sense particulars and actually to begin with genus and species is logically downstream from the universal ‘cow’.  The problem of universals is not salient in the ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ of Adhvarindra.  Sankara deals with it in his section of Brahma Sutra Bhasya called ‘Vedic Words’.  I find some similarity (that word) between his treatment and the ideas of William of Ockham.

More anon on that.

Gavaya: Very like a cow Kumarila

I feel like the detective that turns on his way out the door and says: - There’s one thing that bothering me. Why choose a complex illustration for the upamana pramana if all you had in mind was plain similarity? Why the tuppence coloured cow and gavaya, and the knowledgeable forester etc, etc. Why not offer what everyone can understand eg. a similar design, a similar fate, a similar frock, a book with a similar theme etc. If not, why not? 

 My tentative sense of these ready to hand examples is that they involve unitary instances. One hammer is much like any other qua hammer even though there are many kinds with specialised functions; ball pein, cross pein, claw etc.

 Kumarila in Slokavarttika dismisses the idea of ‘twins’ as an exemplar of similarity because there we see that they are. (22/3 pg.226 Jha trans.) The moment you utter the word ‘twin’ you admit similarity, it is not something that you might discover about twins or peas.

In a case where we have the recognition of a single class as belonging to the principle objects themselves (and not to the parts), there we have a notion (of identity) such as “this is that very thing”; and where there is difference, there we have the notion of Similarity only.

When the person roaming in the forest sees a strange animal, he perceives the beast. At one and the same time he is aware of its ‘cowness’and that it is a gavaya. That is the upamana. To put it portentously we are moving towards a scientifically actionable knowledge of genus and species. 

Kumarila Bhatta on Upamana in Slokavarttika

Bhatta in his Slokavarttika hunts the gavaya out of his forest home into the broad pasture of rational discourse. I mean by that his very full treatment of the pramana known as upamana or analogy/comparison. The view that he controverts is that the Naiyayika school which does not allow that upamana is a pramana. In this note I want to focus on what his positive thesis is.

The fact of "Similarity" (or Resemblance) being a positive entity, however, cannot be denied ; inasmuch as according to them, there exists (or Resemblance) being a positive inasmuch as it consists of the presence, in one class of objects, of such an arrangement (or conglomeration) of constituent parts as is common to another class of objects.

. (18: pg.225) It is not just the discovery of likeness in constituent parts that makes upamana a basic valid means of knowledge, what matters is the identification of what draws together any number of classes which I understand as the discovery of their genus.

And Similarity differs from the {classes) in that it rests upon a conglomeration of classes whereas the classes appear also severally among objects of Sense-perception.

Here Bhatta is disputing the claim that Similarity/Upamana is merely a matter of sense perception or what is termed extraordinary perception which descries similarity or universals in the sensory data pur sang. Ganganatha Jha the translator of this work offers a clarificatory footnote to the discussion whether Upamana might not be a case of inference. Similarity is 'in the cow' and naturally the cow is not present to sense perception in the classical example.

It is the similarity, in the cow, of the gavaya, that is the true object of Analogy ; whereas that which is perceived by the eye is the similarity as located in the gavaya ; and the latter could not give rise to any Inference that would bring about any idea of the similarity in the cow.

(fn.44/45 )

Bergson, Universals, Upamana and the Gavaya

We may then suppose perceptions as different as possible in their superficial details: if only they are continued by the same motor reactions, if the organism can extract from them the same useful effects, if they impress upon the body the same attitude, something common will issue from them, and the general idea will have been felt and passively experienced, before being represented. - Here then we escape at last from the circle in which we at first appeared to be confined. In order to generalize, we said, we have to abstract similarity, but in order to disengage similarity usefully we must already know how to generalize. There really is no circle, because the similarity, from which the mind starts when it first begins the work of abstraction, is not the similarity at which the mind arrives when it consciously generalizes.

(from Matter and Memory)


Here is a move towards the solution of the problem of universals and indeed the upamana pramana. The misunderstanding of the latter problem is underlined by the displacement of the problem into the recognition of a gavaya. Essentially the instruction is simple - the gavaya (bos gaurus) that roams in the jungle is like your domestic cow. Very good but what is a cow like? What do you mean? A cow just a cow, you know what a cow is. The point that Bergson is making, as I understand him, is that the immediate response that generates the sense of sameness is at a different conceptual level from the universal that is a rational construct. An example that he gives from inorganic reactions i.e. hydrochloric acid and marble, does not lead us to believe that one recognises the other.

Upamana: The Gavaya and the Screw Mitre Shoot

We’ve been here before. Has the fog lifted? Can the general lie of the land be discerned? Do we stumble through the forest looking for the fabled ‘gavaya’ (bos gaurus) with the assurance that we will know it when we see it for ‘it is like to your cow itself, without dewlap’. In all the accounts of upamana the gavaya ruminates and how wearying it must be for the correction of papers on the topic to meet it again and again. As I remarked previously the feeling is there that no one quite understands what the force of this pramana is and the security blanket of the canonical story is clung too. Not all schools accept it as a free-standing means of valid knowledge some holding it to be a matter of inference, others a perception. Let me for the sake of this short note simply take the advaitin view as valid which accounts it one of their six pramanas.

Comparison implies contrast and both these intellectual powers are common. We navigate through the strange waters of this world using the knowledge that we have garnered already. We meet a near instance of what we know from previous experience. That previous experience is not present to us as a perception but is referred to by the present perception. It is ‘in’ the present perception, Venn diagram like. The contrasting elements are in the outer non-lapping sections.

Is it simply a matter of memory? Not in a retrieval sense I think. All our conceptual apparatus is present to us as our mind. New stuff finds a fit or fails to find such. I’m at this minute looking at a tool which I bought second hand from a dealer. He called it a clamp. Yes it has a wooden screw that moves a block and it is a holding device. It is a screw mitre shoot so therefore a very specialised sort of clamp. That was the overlap.