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OCTOBER, 1977
Sasadhara's NYAYASIDDHANTADIPA with Commentary by Gunaratna Suri edited by Bimal Krishna Matilal: L.D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, 1976: Pages 232: Price Rs. 45.00.
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The publication under review is a medieval production on Logic. The text has been prepared on the basis of two mss at the L.D. Institute, a photo copy of a mss from the India Office Library, London and a mss printed in a journal in 1924 published from Varanasi. According to the editor, the three mss used represent three different 'families' of mss. The synthesis must have been a difficult job with the editor and it has not been indicated how he arrived at a conciliation to produce a single text and how he claims it to be the most authentic.
Logic is as much a part of any philosophy as it is now of mathematics, though there may be a basic difference between the two. In the Indian, in the sense of traditional Hindu Philosophy, Nyaya is a distinct school which is more than a mere tool. This school has its own philosophy of salvation based on 16 factors and traces its origin to Gautama and Kanada in the age of Upanisads. In the medieval period, when other schools of Hindu philosophy became somewhat indistinct, the Nyaya school gained a new lease of life and the traditional orthodoxy took shelter behind it. Jainism as a system is one and it does not have a separate Nyaya school as Hinduism has.
The Hindu Nyaya school underwent a drastic reformation in the 14th century in the hands of one Nyaya scholar Gangesa by name. He produced what came to be known as Navya or neo-Nyaya school which was simpler in content but stricter in rigidity to suit the needs of the time. The discovery of Sasadhara's Nyāyasiddhāntadīpa is, therefore, sensational, the more so since this work too has been classified as Navya-Nyaya. If this view be accepted, then Sasadhara, not Gangesa, becomes the Martin Luther of the new school. It is, however, likely that since Sasadhara was a Jaina monk, the Hindu orthodoxy must have bypassed him to find their own hero in Gangesa. If this be so, then it is time that the mistake is rectified and Sasadhara is given the pride of place as the father of Navya-Nyaya. Whatever that may be, the fact remains that against the rising onslaught of the Muslim rulers, not only Hindusim but also Jainism took shelter behind Nyaya to save their skin and turned more and more orthodox. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the earliest mss on Sasadhara's work dated 1561 A.D. in the handwriting of one Hira who has been identified as Acarya Hiravijaya who copied it for his own reading. This testifies to its popularity.
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