Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

SR No.: 011115
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1939
Total Pages: 440
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 412

OTHER SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE
395
The Naiyāyıkas, Sāṁkhyas and others object to the above view of arthāpattı as a separate source of knowledge. According to the Naiyāyikas, arthāpatti may be reduced to an inference of the vyatireki type. It is not indeed an anvayı inference in which the major premise expresses a positive relation of agreement in presence between the middle and the major terin, e.g. whenever there is fatness, there is eating at night.' On the other hand, it is a vyatırekı inference in which the major premise expresses a universal relation between the absence of the major and the absence of the middle. Thus the above example of arthāpatti may be reduced to the following syllogism :
A man who does not eat at night while fasting by day
is not fat; This man who fasts at day is fat ; This man is not a man who does not eat at night, i.e.
he eats at night.
As anthāpatti may thus be reduced to yatueki inference, the Nayāyikas refuse to acknowledge it as a separate source of knowledge. So also the Sāmkhya philosophers explain arthāpatti as a form of inference Taking the second example of arthāpattı given above, Vacaspati points out that it can be reduced to the following inference
If a living individual is absent somewhere, he is present
elsewhere; Devadatta who is living is absent from home ; • He is somewhere outside his bome.
Here a man's existence outside bis home is inferred from
his absence from home as the linga or the middle term. There is a relation of vyāptı or universal concomitance between a man's presence somewhere and his absence
1 Yastu na rátruu bhuri kte nâsau divābhuñjāpat ve sati pino, etc , TB, p. 16.