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SEVEN PADARTHAS TARKA
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that. On Jayanta's showing an occasion for vāda arises when with a view to arriving at truth one is discussing a problem with one's preceptor, one's disciple or one's study-colleague, a discussion where no petty motive comes in picture. As for jalpa he admits that since it involves an employment of dishonest debating devices the chances are that the rival might expose one's game, but he naively pleads that in case no honest argument occurs to one's mind one has to take recourse to a dishonest argument rather than get defeated at the very outset, so much so that even an otherwise reputable teacher might resort to jalpa if the danger is that a heretic is there to mislead his disciples and cannot be silenced through an honest argument. As for vitandā Jayanta admits that in the course of it one has a case of one's own as against the rival's case, but the point is that one here does not seek to establish one's case while seeking to refute the rival's case.' Jayanta also taunts the Buddhist for calling all public debate 'vāda' without distinguishing between vāda, jalpa and vitandā." Really, however, the problem of public debate is in essence the problem of composing a text meant for publication, and it is difficult to see how one can resort to a procedure like jalpa or vitandā while putting down one's case in black and white. Again, the aphorist's emphasis is that vāda, jalpa and vitandā have to be conducted through demonstration made up of the five avayavas .pratijñā, hetu etc., but the Nyāya authors themselves never do anything of the sort in any of their published texts, for in that case the redundancy of the first two or the last two avayavas will be all too obvious. The conclusion is inescapable that the doctrine of five avayavas as well as the doctrine of threefold public debate were formulated at an early enough period when attention was concentrated on oral debates conducted in obscure country-corners rather than on written texts meant for a countrywide circulation, this being the reason why these two doctrines turned obsolete in the later period when the chief means of conducting public debate were published texts rather than private gatherings. (While interpreting the aphorism related to vāda Jayanta obscurely explains certain minor points. Thus the aphorism says that a demonstration of the form of vāda has to be conducted through pramāna and tarka, and the opponent objects that pramāņas like perception etc. are of no use in a demonstration while tarka is not at all an independent means of valid cognition; Jayanta first pleads that by pramāņa are here
