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NYAYA-VAISESIKA
245 We may now call attention to an important difference in the general standpoint of the two systems considered separately. The Vaiseşika views the world from the ontological standpoint while the Nyāya does so from the epistemological. This will be clear from the nature of the categories acknowledged in the two systems. We have described the seven padārthas of the Vaišeşika. The Nyāya recognizes sixteen padarnas, and all the seven of the Vaiseșika are included in but one of them-prameya or 'the knowable,' the second of the sixteen. The first category is pramāna. These two terms-pramāna and prameya-are sufficient to make clear the specific view-point of the Nyāya. It does not concern itself with things as such, but rather with how they are known or demonstrated. This should not be taken to mean that the Nyāya felt any doubt as regards the independent existence of objects. It admitted their independent reality as readily as the sister system, but it felt that knowledge might easily mislead us, and therefore set about investigating the laws of correct thought. This standpoint becomes clearer still from the nature of the remaining fourteen categories, which are all serviceable either in the discovery of truth or in safeguarding it against irrational attacks. The aim of the Nyāya thus is first to win the field of truth and then to secure it with the fence of dialectics against the encroachment of error and sophistry. The Nyāya is not accordingly mere logic, but also a theory underlying the art of controversy. The logical part seems at first to have been even overladen with dialectical devices, but having been relieved of much of this encumbrance it became fully prominent in course of time. Works like the Nyāya-sära of Bhāsarvajña, exhibit this change by adopting a new classification of their subject-matter and treating of it under the four heads of perception, inference, verbal testimony
These are samsaya (doubt), prayojana (aim), drstänta (example), siddhānta (conclusion), avayava (members of the syllogism), tarka (hypothesis), nirnaya (settlement), vāda (discussion), jalpa (wrangling), vitanda (cavilling), hetvābhāsa (fallacy), chala (fraud), jäti (wrong objection), and nigraha-sthāna (occasion for reproof). 2 NS. IV. ii. 50. It is interesting to note that the same figure was used by the Stoics also.
