Book Title: Dignaga On Trairupya Reconsidered
Author(s): Shoryu Katsura
Publisher: Shoryu Katsura

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Page 18
________________ 258 par gcod par thal bar 'gyur | de’i phyir mthun phyogs med pa nyid // "That which is different from or incompatible with it (i.e. sapakşa); neither of them is (called] vipaksa. .. Therefore, (vi paksa is) nothing but the absence of sapakșa." In NMukh Dingāga defines sapakșa as any object which is similar to sādhyadharma and in PS III as any object which is close / similar to (paksa] (the topic of a proposition) in respect of sādhyadharma-sāmānya—though he simply says "nye ba'i phyir", I assume from the context that we can supply the word pakșa. I must confess that I cannot make good sense of the definition in NMukh, namely, “any object which is similar to the property to be proven.” Incidentally, the idea comes close to the Tibetan translation of the Nyāyabindu II. 9: mthun phyogs ni bsgrub par bya ba'i chos kyi spyi dang don mthun pa'o, which influenced the dGe lugs pa's understanding of sapakșa as demonstrated by Tom Tillemans.") If we adopt Tillemans's suggestion (p. 59), the NMukh definition of sapaksa may mean "any object which has the property to be proven", in which case, however, it would be difficult to distinguish between pakșa and sapakșa. The PS III definition clearly distinguishes sapakșa from pakṣa and more explicitly indicates that sapaksa is “any object which has the property to be proven”. For example in the proposition: “The mountain has a fire,” sapakșa consists of any object which has the property to be proven, in other words, the domain of presence of the property to be proven, i.e., fiery places. The PS III version becomes the standard definition of sapaksa after Dignāga. In NMukh Dignāga defines vipaksa as "an object which lacks the property to be proven", in other words the domain of absence of the property to be proven. If we adopt the above-mentioned definition of sapakṣa in PS III, namely, the domain of presence of the property to be proven, then the two domains are complementary to each other and together will make up the

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