Date and Authorship of Nyayavatara

Author(s): M A Dhaky
Publisher: Z_Nirgrantha_1_022701.pdf and Nirgrantha_2_022702.pdf and Nirgrantha_3_022703.pdf

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M. A. Dhaky
Nirgrantha
presenting the Nirgranthist standpoint and notions on the attributes, qualifications, and nature of pramāna, a fact I must stress and repeat here on the authority of Vidyabhusana, Sanghvi, Malwaniya, Mookerjee, and a few other contemporary writers.
The upper limit of the date of the Nyāyavatāra can be fixed as c. late ninth or early tenth century, which, incidentally, is the general date-bracket of Siddharsi's vivrtti commentary. The internal state of the Nyāyavatāra is our dependable guide in fixing its virtual or plausible date and, by its logic, get some indication on its probable authorship. We may begin by comparing the Nyāyāvatāra with the works of Dinnāga, the founder of the systematic school of the Buddhist logic. Malwaniya, in the comparisons he instituted of the Nyāyāvatāra with the works of other ancient and pre-medieval authorities, has included Dinnaga's famous works such as the Pramanasamuccaya, the Nyāyamukha, and the Nyāyapraveśa. While he has drawn attention to certain similarities, as also the reflected thinkings of (and even oppositions to) Dinnāga's statements and views in the Nyāyāvatāra, he drew no conclusions arising from the correspondences as well as familiarities noticed. I shall select a few points froin Malwaniya's notings which more directly and forcefully indicate the acquaintance of the author of the Nyāyāvatāra with Dinnāga's famous works :
1. Dinnāga has qualified the parārtha-anumāna with two characteristics, namely the
lietu-vacana and the paksād-vacana. Both are included in the kārika 13 of the
Nyāyāvatāra 2. The refutation of the kārikā 1. 23 of Dinnaga's Pramanasamuccaya is in the kärikā
28 of the Nyāyāvatāra??.
3.
The first foot of the kārikā 10 of the Nyāyāvatāra is an adoption, with very slight" change, of Dinnagas.
The Nyāyāvatāra thus seems posterior to the works of Dinnāga (c. A. D. 480-540) and hence subsequent to c. A. D. 550. It cannot, therefore, be the work of Siddhasena Divākaraa
Further weight to this surmise is lent by the wording of the first plirase of the opening verse of the Nyāyāvatāra (Pramānam svaparābhāsi) which shows correspondence with the wording of the strophe of the verse 63 of the Brahadsvayambhu-stotra of Samantabhadra 30 (c. A. D. 600) to which Malwaniya las hinted 31 : ('samagrata'sti svapara-vibhāsakam, yathā pramanam buddhi-laksanam). Also, Mukhtar has demonstrated that the influence of Pátrakesari alias Patrasvāmi, a Digambara epistemologist of note of the second (or first half of the seventh century A. D., is discernible on the definition of the anumāna-pramana (cognition by inference) figuring in the Nyāyavatāra; moreover, the first foot of the kārikā 22 concerning the hetu-laksana