Production Of Philosophical Literature In South Asia During Pre Colonial Period

SR No.: 269575
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Karin Preisendanz
Publisher: Karin Preisendanz
Total Pages: 40
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 5 MB

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THE NYAYASŪTRA COMMENTARIAL TRADITION
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origins of Nyāya in the tradition of debate, in its three middle chapters the work presents - in a more or less systematic arrangement - numerous dialectically structured discussions on epistemological, psychological and metaphysical topics, as well as on topics of philosophy of nature, leading to the establishment of the position of the Nyāya proponent. The partners in conversation, or rather opponents in dispute, who can be identified by us or were already identified by the early commentators, are thinkers within the Nyāya tradition itself and contemporary or slightly anterior philosophers of rival traditions such as the Sankhya and the Mīmāmsā, the latter especially in the context of philosophy of language. Further opponents can be determined as adherents of the largely lost materialist tradition of Indian philosophy and as philosophers belonging to the early Buddhist traditions of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra as well as representatives of early classical Buddhist scholastics. Owing to their diametrically opposed metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions, the exchange of opinions with the Buddhist thinkers as reflected in the Nyāyasūtra was especially fierce and controversial; prominent examples are the questions of the existence of an individual, permanent and substantial Self (ātman) in (wo)man" or of the nature and very possibility of means of valid cognition (pramāna).
Those philosophers who were close to the tradition of the Nyāyasūtra and studied it in subsequent times must have considered their required contribution to the tradition to consist in the explanation of the pithy statements of the Sūtra under the aspect of their wording and content. This was achieved by them in accordance with their own philosophical ideas and knowledge of the tradition as such, probably taking into special consideration the explanations of their teachers; in the process they brought the philosophical discussions in the Sūtra itself and earlier commentaries on it up to date. Most of the literature of classical Nyāya thus presents itself in the form of commentaries on the Nyāyasūtra, sub-commentaries and further commentaries on these, and we know of quite a number of works belonging to these genres.
For a brief survey, cf. e.g., Franco/Preisendanz (1998b). 4 Cf. especially Oetke (1984: 247-278), Preisendanz (1994). scr. Oetke (1991).