It will be seen that the Buddhist definition of valid perception denies any active role to the knowing subject concerning the knowledge situation. This may appear to be a thoroughly unidealistic position in epistemology. Where knowledge is valid, the subject can be nothing more than a spectator. Qua spectator, the subject should feel neither attachment nor aversion. These and other affective attitudes arise in consequence of the distortion of reality by the intellect. Logically speaking, moral distinctions are no less subjective than the conceptual distinctions, though the subjectivity of the former is not

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emphasized. In this respect , the Buddhist division between the real and the phenomenal is more radical than that in the Kantian system. The sort of freedom that Kant is inclined to attribute to the self as a denizen of the noumenal world is foreign to the scheme of the Buddhist idealists. The Pratyabhijñā system alone appears to attach special significance to freedom. If all our attachment and aversion is due to subjective distortion of the real, then it is difficult to make sense of the distinction between righteous and wrong conduct;that distinction is essentially bound up with agreeable and painful reactions produced by human agents in living creatures. Regarding Kant, he utterly fails to explain the nature and possibility of action enacted in the noumenal world.

　　 Even the overconfident, optimistic, and commonsensical Naiyāyika occasion­ally felt puzzled by the controversy about perceptual knowledge initiated by the Buddhists. Thus at one place Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, half-indignant and half-puzzled, remarks:

We really do not know what is it that (on Buddhist view) is grasped or cognised in the so-called indeterminate perception. You say that the object of such per­ception is the unique, momentary particular, which can be declared to be neither similar to (i.e. belonging to the same class or kind as) anything nor as dissimilar to anything else. Others say that the object of cognition is the highest genus, Being-as-such; still others maintain that the object known in indeterminate cognition is of the nature of Vāk (speech). It is surprising that there should be such differences of opinion regarding the object of perceptual cognition. Disagreement about invisible matters may be resolved by direct cognition, but when there is disagreement about the seen or visible things, how (on earth) can it be resolved? Whether this appears or does not appear— under such circumstances of disagreement, one can, while trying to convince another, only resort to swearing.[6]

　　 Jayanta's puzzlement is genuine and deserving of our sympathy- Russell's view that what is revealed by acquaintance are the sense-data, on the one hand, and the universals including relations, on the other, would be no less puzzling to Jayanta Bhatta and Diṅnāga. (Jayanta, of course, proceeds to refute the Buddhist view with his characteristic confidence.)

　　 We have referred to controversies regarding perception generally by way of example, most of the discussions relating to the nature and kinds of direct cognition- the cognition of the self, the cognition of cognition self, etc., enacted by different realist and idealist schools—the Mīmāṁsākas, the Naiyāyikas, the Advaita Vedāntists, and others continue to be interesting and suggestive to modern students of philosophy. Varied discussions about causation, particularly in Buddhism, Samkhya, and Nyāya, remain likewise stimulating and interesting for the moderns. Some methodological issues raised by such  dialectician philosophers as Nāgārjuna and Śrīharṣa retain their relevance for modern thinkers.

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Ⅴ

The conviction that knowledge was a necessary precondition of the pursuit of the highest type of happiness or fulnllment led Indian philosophers to pay the greatest attention to logico-epistemological problems; their serious commitment to the religious goal made them pay equal attention to the fundamental bases of ethicoreligious life. The use of the compound adjective 'ethico­religious' here is deliberate, for the two sides of life were hardly distinguished either by popular or by metaphysical Indian thought. Thus Manu, one of the most important sources of the socioethical ideas of the Hindus, envisages the" progress of a man's life through the stages called āśramas as also a progress toward mokṣa, or the highest fulfillment and destiny of the soul. The Mami Samhila, presupposing the doctrine of reincarnation and the conception of  mokṣa as release from the round of births and deaths, unequivocally recom­mends the practice of niśkāma ken-man for the attainment of mokśa. It says:

"The karma enjoined or sanctioned by the Veda are of two kinds, that which is done with attachment is called pravṛtta; it leads to happiness and prosperity here; the other, which is done with detachment and knowledge, is called nivrtta, it has for its aim the highest good or mokṣa."[7] Following the theistic idiom, the Bhagavadgīda states that, worshipping the Lord with (the per­formance of) his allotted actions or duties, man attains the highest goal. As is well known, the Bhagavadgīda is emphatic in its refusal to equate renunciation with the abandonment of dutiful action. Both Manu and theBhagavadgīda are one in upholding the dignity of the life of action.