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KARIN PREISENDANZ.
paper on the new intellectuals of the seventeenth century, Sheldon Pollock has singled out usages of this kind as indicative of the new intellectual climate of the period in which, contrary to the preceding times, one's own position within a scholarly tradition is conceptualized in a historicist manner, that is, self-consciously located within a historical sequence and labelled accordingly. As Pollock points out, this intellectual attitude is to be observed in the discourse involving one's own tradition, be it a philosophical tradition or some other scholarly or scientific tradition. Additionally, the relevant rhetorical elements are expressive of some awareness of the progress, from the point of view of content, of scholarly analysis, or at least of the expectation of such progress. As the example of Vācaspati shows, this phenomenon can be registered already in the fifteenth century, and before that it can be observed with Gangesa and the preGangesa Naiyāyika Manikantha. Connected with the phenomenon and cause for some internal tension is the enduring high respect for the authority of the legendary founder of the tradition, expressed especially at the beginning and end of scholarly works. Returning to Vācaspati, I would like to point out in this connection that he speaks of Akşapāda as a great sage (mahāmuni) who founded Anvīksikī to rescue the transmigrating beings sunk into in the swamp of suffering. 54 Besides the reverence for Akşapāda expressed here, one has to note the employment of the designation Anvīksikī for the Nyāya tradition, a designation which goes back to Vātsyāyana's early efforts to establish his philosophical tradition among the orthodox sciences under the name of Nyāya, as the centrally important 'investigating [science]' praised already in Kautalya's Arthaśāstra." I consider this use of an ancient, highly suggestive designation, which occurs several times in the Nyāyatattvāloka, as indicative of Vācaspati's renewed pride in the historically conceptualized antiquity of his own tradition and of his positive evaluation of its foundational work in spite of its obsoleteness on the surface level. A further telling designation for the teaching or doctrinal edifice (śāstra) of Nyāya used by Vācaspati is Pañcādhyāyī, 50 a term that immediately effects some association with 53 Cf. Pollock (2001, especially 7-14). 54 Cf. NTĀ3, 14-16: ... iti sarvam abhisandhāya duḥkhaparkamagnān samsāriņa uddidhīrṣann akşapādo mahāmunis tadupaśamas ya paramparopāyabhūtām ānvīksikim pranināya; cf. also the appellation Aksacaranamuni in NTA 26, 19 (... manasa indriyatābhyupagamo 'kşacaranamuneh ...) and 117, 20(...asūtritamānasendriyatăbhyupagamo 'kşacaranamuneh). 55 Cf. Preisendanz (2000: 225–230). 56 Cf. NTĀ 16, 20 (pañcādhyāyī śāstram).