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Thirdly, Matilal's difficulty is symbolic of1 all those who simultaneously profess empiricism in epistemology and realism in ontology without allowing God to play any role in the game. Dummett has a point when he states that without invoking God, rather the paradigm of the Berkeleyan God's knowledge, it is difficult to vindicate realism and to contain scepticism.¹⁴ Since Matilal, like Dummett,¹⁵ recognizes the importance of the (truth-value-wise) determinate character of cognitive statements, he is required to pay added attention to this problem. Otherwise, one feels his steps to direct realism are rather hasty and tentative.

Fourthly, apparently in recognition of the importance of the role of language in ascertaining the determinate (or otherwise) character of knowledge-claiming statements, Matilal takes up this issue once again in his monograph, The Word and the World. Referring to the two views on the word-object relationship found in the Nyaya-Vaisesika school, viz., (i) it is fixed conventionally, and (ii) it is fixed by God, he concedes 'both . . . contain some grains of truth'. In order to eliminate or minimize the effects of '(i)' 'conventionalism', relativism due to language-user's whim, and those of (ii)' 'eternalism' or counter-intuitive fixedness of word-object relationship, Matilal pleads 'for accepting a theory like the sphota theory of language'.¹⁶ For, the ontologically warranted assumption is that in the mind of the competent speaker and the competent hearer the words and their meanings remain identical at all times and places. But is not this highly idealized assumption contrary to our bilingual/multilingual experience of expression, exchange and translation? I would like to hold that, following Bhartrhari, sphotavada leavesroom for variation in the word-object relationship without causing any breakdown of communication. It is to be remembered here that Bhartrhari's theory of language was not merely logico-episiemic but also aligned to rhetoric and poetics.¹⁷

Fifthly, close examination of Matilal's arguments, examples and references shows an element of ambivalence in his basic approach to semantics, ontology and epistemology, despite his avowed liking for direct realism. It is difficult to accept the external realist's claim that a particular object together with its underlying universal or: the property of which it is an instantiation can be directly and unerringly grasped. Is our body a mute and passive spectator of the enterprise called knowing that 'takes place' in it? That our body and, particularly, brain are specially equipped Co gather, categorize and retain information about our inseparably related 'inner' and 'outer' worlds is evident from the (degree of) success of the action performed in the light of those items of information. The structured awareness of our body to which different items of information, different aspects of the same object as information-source, along with their changing and stable rela­tions are available, while the body itself by its active and reflective capacity can generate new information is often said to be human self.¹⁸ "When these facts about our psychosomatic system are rightly kept in view, the direct realist's, image of knowledge appears simplistic, if not obscure and misleading.

Finally, samsaya (initial doubt) and jijnasa (questioning) are not at all incompatible with prama or jnana, certainly not in the Indian tradition of philosophy.¹⁹ Samsaya isa cognitive state of rest or arrest. Hegel speaks of a similar sense of cognitive-cum-explorative rest in his Phenomenology of Mind in the context of scepticism. Skepsis, the root word, by its very nature means the oscillation between a truth that is 'already' (naturally) there in consciousness and 'not yet' (transcendentally) present in consciousness. Comparable in sense is Sankara 's jijnasa. It is question­ing by the self on the basis of the inarticulate knowledge of the Self for its articulate realization. Neither in samsaya nor in jijnasa the vaticination of knowledge is absent. With knowledge is present the world of objects, both 'inner' and 'outer'.

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