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Buddhist Philosophy
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of cases. The first is that where the nature of the reason is contained in the thing to be inferred as a part of its nature, i.e. where the reason stands for a species of which the thing to be inferred is a genus; thus a stupid person living in a place full of tall pines may come to think that pines are called trees because they are tall and it may be useful to point out to him that even a small pine plant is a tree because it is pine; the quality of pineness forms a part of the essence of treeness, for the former being a species is contained in the latter as a genus; the nature of the species being identical with the nature of the genus, one could infer the latter from the former but not vice versa; this is called the unfailing natural connection of identity of nature (tādātinya). The second is that where the cause is inferred from the effect which stands as the reason of the former. Thus from the smoke the fire which has produced it may be inferred. The ground of these inferences is that reason is naturally indissolubly connected with the thing to be inferred, and unless this is the case, no inference is warrantable.
This natural indissoluble connection (svabhāvapratibandha), be it of the nature of identity of essence of the species in the genus or inseparable connection of the effect with the cause, is the ground of all inference! The svabhāvapratibandha determines the inseparability of connection (avinābhāvaniyama) and
ce is made not through a series of premisses but directly by the linga (reason) which has the inseparable connection?
The second type of inference known as parārthānumāna agrees with svārthānumāna in all essential characteristics; the main difference between the two is this, that in the case of parārthănumāna, the inferential process has to be put verbally in premisses.
Pandit Ratnākaraśānti, probably of the ninth or the tenth century A.D., wrote a paper named Antarvyāptisamarthana in which
i na hi yo yatra svabhāvena na pratibaddhah sa tam apratibaddhavisayamavasyameva na vyabhicaratiti násti tayoravyabhicāraniyamah. Nyāyabinduţikā, p. 29.
2 The inseparable connection determining inference is only possible when the linga satisfies the three following conditions, viz. (1) pakşasattva (existence of the linga in the pakşa—the thing about which something is inferred); (2) sapakșasattva (existence of the linga in those cases where the sādhya or probandum existed), and (3) vipakşāsattva (its non-existence in all those places where the sadhya did not exist). The Buddhists admitted three propositions in a syllogism, e.g. The hill has fire, because it has smoke, like a kitchen but unlike a lake.
