________________
7
FIVE PADARTHAS SAMSAYA
PRAYOJANA ETC.
In this chapter (Ahnika X) Jayanta offers an account of five padarthas, viz. samsaya, prayojana, dṛṣṭänta, siddhänta, avayava, and since they have no apparent logical connection with one another they have to be taken up one by one in the order adopted by Jayanta himself.
(1) Samsaya (Doubt)
The Nyayasutra aphorism laying down the definition of samsaya or doubt speaks of five types of it; but the difficulty about it is that four of these types are obscurely worded and in any case they do not seem to be of any fundamental importance. Again, Jayanta's explanation has become tedious because he reports about certain interpreters who in an ingenious fashion drop out certain words from this aphorism to yield a general definition of doubt while making out that the whole of the aphorism defines the five types of doubt. And to make matters worse, Jayanta here indulges in a long discussion of an ontological problem which has nothing to do with doubt as such but is of use in following an example cited by Vatsyayana in connection with one of the five types in question. So, let us begin with what constitutes the crux of the Nyayasutra understanding of doubt; thus according to it doubt arises when on observing certain features in an entity one is reminded of two things which both share these features while there are not being observed in this entity, any features exclusively belonging to either of these two things, but to this is added that doubt might also arise under the following four conditions:
(i) when one observes in an entity a feature exclusively belonging to a thing but is not sure as to whether or not another feature also belongs to this entity;2
(ii) when one learns about a thesis that certain people uphold it while certain others reject it, so that one is not oneself sure whether or not this thesis is valid;"
(iii) when one observes a thing but is not sure whtether or not
