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The process of bAdha is defined in Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English
dictionary as “a contradiction, objection,
absurdity, the being excluded by superior proof
(in logic one of the 5 forms of fallacious middle
term)” The word used in English is “sublation” (or
occasionally “subration”), which
the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “assimilate
(a smaller entity) into a larger one.” But
these descriptions confuse and over-complicate
what is actually a simple process. All that it
means is that we held one explanation for a situation
in our experience; then some new knowledge came
along and we realized that an entirely different
explanation made far more sense.
For example, people used to think that the
earth was flat†. If a ship sailed as far as the
horizon, it would fall off the edge. Then some
new knowledge came along – the earth is
spherical. Now we can understand that the ship
is moving further around the sphere and thus
out of our sight. This new explanation has the
added benefit of being able to explain how it
is that a ship can return after having fallen
off the edge! And it even explains why the horizon
seems to be curved. So the old explanation – that
the earth is flat – is said to have been “sublated” by
the new one. It is said to be bAdhita – negated
or shown to be contradictory, absurd or false.
The example always used in Advaita is that
of the rope and snake. We see the rope in poor
light and erroneously conclude that it is a snake.
Once a light (i.e. knowledge) has been shone
onto the situation, we realize our mistake. If
we encounter the situation again, we may still
imagine we see a snake but the likelihood of
being deceived is now much reduced because we
no longer accord the same level of authenticity
to our perception. It is this process of rejecting
the appearance in the light of our experience
or new knowledge that is called sublation or
bAdha. This also provides a useful definition
of “truth” in that the less able
we are to sublate an experience, the truer it
must be.‡
The Enlish word 'sublate' is thought to derive
from the German 'aufheben', meaning 'to pick
up' (from the Latin 'sublatum', the past participle
of tollo 'pick up'). Sunder Hattangadi has
provided the following links, which provide some
serious and some amusing information about this:
http://www.hegel.net/en/sublation.htm
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001837.php
He also notes that Gearge Thibaut used this
word in his translations of Shankara's
sutra-bhashya in 1890, and in Ramanuja's in 1904. [http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe34/index.htm Shankara
1890; http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe48/index.htm Ramanuja
1904 ].
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