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4
SOUL
In the first six Āhnikas covering about two-thirds of his whole ext Jayanta discusses the first Nyaya padartha called pramāņa. More than half of the remaining text is devoted to the second padartha prameya and is divided into three chapters, the rest (again fivided into three chapters) taking up the remaining fourteen Nyaya padarthas. So we have now to examine Jayanta's consideration of the Nyaya padartha prameya. Really, in the history of Nyaya school a treatment of this padartha has played no role of any fundamental importance. For in order to be logically significant this padartha had to cover ontological topics in an exhaustive fashion, but this was something which it obviously failed to do and for which the Nyaya authors used to depend on their Vaiseșika colleagues who had instead posited the basic concept of six padarthas dravya, guna, etc. In all probability the Nyaya category of prameya was posited in hoary antiquity by the authors who would pursue an Upanisad-type of enquiry but on a logical rather than intuitional basis. So, here were included six entological and six ethical topics which were of fundamental importance for those busy with the problem of transmigration and release-from-transmigration - not with the whole gamut of ontological problems. This over-all situation has somehow found reflection in Jayanta's own enquiry into the padartha prameya. Thus this enquiry is so much important not for what it says about the twelve topics covered under this padartha, for all that is very much brief and a very much a routine stuff. The importance of it rather lies in the way Jayanta here creates occasion for discussing certain most outstanding ontological problems. To be precise, while dealing with the first topic Atman (=soul) he undertakes a masterly refutation of the Buddhist doctrine of momentarism, while dealing with the fifth topic buddhi(=cognition) that of Sänkhya metaphysics in general, while dealing with the last topic apavarga (= moksa, release-from-transmigration) that of the three illusionist doctrines of Brahman-monism, Word-monism, Vijñäna-monism. Of course, in connection with the first topic soul and the last topic mokṣa
