Paksilasvamins Introduction To His Nyayabhasyam

SR No.: 269261
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Gerhard Oberhammer
Publisher: Gerhard Oberhammer
Total Pages: 21
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

Page 15

316
ASIAN STUDIES
The starting point for such a determination can be found in two remarks which Paksilasvāmin makes while he identifies his science with the Anvīksikī. There, he observes that the Anvīkșiki, and consequently also his science, is a nyāyavidyā6 and explains this idea in the second passage, where the Anvikșiki is said to be ānviksiki or nyāyavidyā because it operates with anviksā (=nyayah). In other words, the starting point for the determination of the nature of his science is for Paksilasvāmin, the idea already mentioned that the Nyāya represents an Adhyātma-doctrine, which operates essentially with the method of nyāyaḥ,38 ' i.e., a rationally worked out Adhyatma-doctrine. This idea is, after all, not new. It was already implicitly contained in the attitude of the oldest Nyāya tradition, as we find it in NS I, 1, 1 and 2, and this must have been one of the reasons why this old cosmologically oriented doctrine of liberation integrated into its system an exposition of Väda doctrine. Besides, this attitude is not even typical for the oldest Nyāya; it is already found in a developed form in the still older system of Samkhya, which was a genuine Adhyātmadoctrine and operating so much with rational method, that its followers could be characterized as tārkikâh. What is new is the fact that Paksilasvāmin, starting from this determination of his science, endeavors to show the old categories of the Vada doctrine as an integral part of the Nyāya. In doing so, he therefore preserves these categories in the tradition of his school, in as far as he shows them as necessary topics of the system.
The starting point of this demonstration is, as mentioned already, the determination of Nyāya as a rationally worked out liberation-doctrine. The dominating idea of this doctrine is the "knowledge of the truth” (tattvajñānam). By this is meant not only the topics (padārthah) of the Nyāya being the knowledge of the truth as determined in its content, but also the knowledge of the truth in as far as it is movement of thought, as spiritual event obeying objective norms. Hence, those topics of Nyāya explaining and analyzing the knowledge of truth as movement of thought are also to be considered as necessarily belonging to the topics of Nyāya, and not only the categories of Pramāna and Prameya which needed no further justification.
36 Nbh., 3, 6. 37 Ibid., 3, 6-4, 1. 38 Cf. P. Hacker: Anvikșiki p. 70 ff.