New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 96

VI
Organs of Knowledge (Pramāna).
It was Ācārya Siddhasena Divākara of the fifth century A.D. who laid the foundation-stone of the science of organs of knowledge in Jaina philosophy. There was not any independent treatise on the subject before that period, though there was a huge literature concerned with epistemology, which was a common heritage of Jainism and Buddhism, handed down from ancient times. This literature was mainly concerned with epistemo-psychological problems and the systems of extra-sensory perceptions such as mind-reading, clairvoyance and omniscience. In the Anuyogadvāra Satra, under the Jpāna-guna-pramāna, there is an exposition of the time-honoured four categories of valid knowledge propounded by the Nyāya school viz. pratyakşa (perception), anumāna (inference), upamāna (comparison) and agama (scripture). The illustrations of the varieties of inference quoted in the Anuyogadvāra Sūtra are not found in the extant Nyāya treatises. Nor are they strictly logical. They perhaps represent an ancient tradition, probably a popular version of the strictly logical expositions of the relevant concepts. The Nyāya school had a long history which is now not known to us. The logical ideas developed slowly and passed through various stages. The Anuyogadvāra Sūtra might be representing one such stage. There is, however, no doubt that the science of logic had reached a stage of perfection before the Buddhist logician Dignāga and the Jaina thinker Acārya Siddhscna Divākara composed their treatises on logic.
The Buddhists and the Jainas entered the arena of logic rather at a late period, their main interest at the early stages being mainly soteriological. Like Vasubandhu in Buddhism, Siddhasena Divākara perhaps was the first Jaina logician who composed his Nyāyāvatāra, introducing a system of logic in Jaina thinking. It was a desideratum, because old notions and concepts had to be defended on a logical basis using technical terms that had been invented by the Nyāya school by that time. The credit of the development of a comprehensive system of organs of knowledge (pramāņa) can be assigned to Ācārya Akalanka, who can be considered as the greatest pioneer in the field of Jaina logic. Both Haribhadra and Akalanka belong to the 8th century A.D., the former hailed from Rajasthān in the north and the latter from