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THE NYAYASŪTRA COMMENTARIAL TRADITION
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above has, of course, only the nature of a working hypothesis which has to be corroborated in further detail or to be modified in the light of a more thorough analysis of the works and other testimonies. Also, the information about the authors themselves, their patrons and their networks is only fragmentary and remains to be fleshed out. Furthermore, the tradition of Navya-Nyāya in Navadvīpa, where after Ilyas Shah the general conditions for scholarship and for scholarly travel (foremost to centres of learning such as Mithila and Kāśi) must have improved, resulting in the production of a voluminous philosophical literature,129 could not be addressed within the scope of the present contribution. The Navadvīpa tradition of commenting upon the Nyāyasūtra is mainly represented by a small fragment of a Nyāyasūtravyākhyā by Māthurānātha Tarkavāgisa, followed by Rāmabhadra Sārvabhauma's important Nyāyarahasya (end of the sixteenth/beginning of the seventeenth century), both works that I have not yet been able to study in sufficient detail. 130 Supplementing his father's commentary on the fifth adhyāya only of the Nyāyasūtra, that is, Jānakīnātha's above-mentioned Anvīksikītattvavivarana,"51 Rāmabhadra, who was the teacher of the more famous Jagadīša Tarkālankāra,132 commented on the first four adhyāya-s. Another prominent representative of this tradition is Visvanātha Pañcānana, whose well-known, but not yet thoroughly studied Nyāyasūtravrtti was completed in 1634 in Vịndāvana, that is, some hundred years after Keśava Miśra of Mithilā wrote his Gautamīvasūtraprakāśa; his self-proclaimed motive in composing this commentary was to make the extensive Nyāyaśāstra of Akşapāda, whom he elsewhere calls a sage, 133 able to be understood easily and without much effort even
129 Cf. Chakravarti (1915a: 272, 1929-1930: 249). 130 For a first study of the Nyāyarahasya cf. Sen (1987, for Sen's recent edition of this work cf. n. 58 above). Śülapāni (Thakur. 1970: 37, 1981: xxii) and Svapneśvara (Thakur, loc. cit.), grandson of Vasudeva Sārvabhauma (Bhattacharyya, 1940: 60), are said to have written commentaries on the Nyāyasūtra, but their works have not yet been located.
Among other preceding commentaries on the Nyāyasūtra quoted by Jānakīnātha he refers to the lost Bhaskara (cf. n. 37 above) (cf. Mishra, 1966: 421, relying on information provided by Dineshchandra Bhattacharya). 132 Cf. Chakravarti (1915a: 281-282) and Kaviraj (1982: 86) with reference to the Nyāyarahasya in the latter's sabdaśaktiprakāśikā.
» Cf. the first concluding verse of the Nyāyasūtravriti in which Viśvanātha also refers to (Raghunātha) Siromani, devotee of Krsnacandra, with the help of whose utterances he composed his commentary (NVr 1201, 16-19): eşā munipravaragautamasūtravịttih śrīviśvanāthakrtinā sugamālpavarņā / śrīkrsnacandracaranambujacancarikaśrīmacchiromanivacahpracayair akāri //.