Nyaya

What defines it

1. 01

   Sixteen padarthas, from pramana to nigrahasthana

2. 02

   Four pramanas: perception, inference, comparison, testimony

3. 03

   Five-limbed inference: pratijna, hetu, udaharana, upanaya, nigamana

4. 04

   Hetvabhasa: the fallacies of reason

5. 05

   Apavarga: release through right knowledge

01Sixteen topics, one goal

The Nyaya Sutra of Akshapada Gautama runs to five books, each split into two daily lessons (ahnikas). Its very first sutra (1.1.1) names sixteen topics, beginning with pramana, the means of knowing, and prameya, what is to be known, and ending with the tricks and dead ends of a bad debate. A true grasp of these, it says, leads to nihshreyasa, the highest good. The next sutra (1.1.2) gives the chain behind it: suffering comes from birth, birth from activity, activity from faults, and faults from false knowledge. Cut false knowledge, and the chain falls apart link by link until apavarga, release. So logic in Nyaya is never a parlour game. It is a sadhana for the soul.

02Smoke on the hill

Nyaya accepts four pramanas (Nyaya Sutra 1.1.3): pratyaksha, perception; anumana, inference; upamana, knowing by likeness; and shabda, the word of a trustworthy speaker, with the Veda first among such words. Its stock example has been recited in every pathashala for two thousand years. The hill has fire, because it has smoke; wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen; this hill has such smoke; so it has fire. Those are the five limbs of a public argument: pratijna, hetu, udaharana, upanaya and nigamana. Nyaya also catalogues the hetvabhasas, reasons that only look like reasons, and sorts debate into three kinds: vada, honest inquiry; jalpa, arguing to win; and vitanda, mere attack with no thesis of one’s own.

03From Vatsyayana to Navadvip

Vatsyayana’s Nyaya Bhashya is the oldest surviving commentary. Udyotakara wrote his Nyaya Varttika in the 6th century to answer the Buddhist logician Dignaga, and Vachaspati Mishra of Mithila carried the defence forward. Udayana, also of Mithila, closed the old school around 1000 CE. Then Gangesha Upadhyaya of Mithila, in the 14th century, wrote the Tattvachintamani in four parts, one for each pramana, and began Navya-Nyaya, a precise technical language for definitions. Its second home was Navadvip in Bengal, where Vasudeva Sarvabhauma and Raghunatha Shiromani taught around 1500. Grammarians, Dharmashastra jurists and Vedantins all borrowed its terms. Students still start with the Tarkasangraha of Annambhatta.

Great masters

In the texts

• Nyaya Sutra 1.1.1–1.1.3
• Nyaya Bhashya of Vatsyayana
• Tattvachintamani of Gangesha
• Tarkasangraha of Annambhatta

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