About Khyativada

Khyātivāda is the term used to refer to the Indian Theories of Perceptual Error – khyāti (ख्यातिः) besides referring to 'fame', 'renown' etc., in Samkhya philosophy refers to the 'erroneous conception' or 'false apprehension', and vāda means - 'proposition', 'discourse', 'argument'. These are all theories that deal with the nature of the object of illusory perception and not with the nature of the subject, whether the error consists in the object or in the subject’s cognition. There are five principal theories dealing with perceptual errors, which are:-1) Asat-khyātivāda (buddhism) – error in considering the unreal(non existent)to be real.in madhyamika buddhism error means describing the ultimate reality to be either real,unreal or both real and unreal or neither real and unreal. 2) Ātma-khyātivāda (self-apprehension) – it is the mental state projected outside as a mental image, the error occurs owing to the externalization of inner thoughts, by treating the internal object as external (extra-mental) and the error exists not in the object but in the subject. 3) Akhyātivāda (non-apprehension) – the error is due to the failure to distinguish between perception and memory, it is due to the lack of right discrimination vis-à-vis memory. 4) Anyathā-khyātivāda (misapprehension) (Nyāya) – the object perceived under illusion is real elsewhere, not here in front of the perceiver because of the mind connected with the object on account of memory, the error is due to wrong understanding of the presented and the represented, and occurs, as Vachaspati Mishra states - सदन्तरं सदन्तरात्मना गृह्यते - when "one reality is mistaken for another". 5) Anirvacanīya-khyātivāda (Advaita) – the object is neither existent (सत्) nor non-existent (असत्) but indescribable (अनिर्वचनियम्), the illusory object is a product of ignorance (avidyā) about the substratum and the error is caused due to Maya which is also indescribable.