Paksilasvamins Introduction To His Nyayabhasyam

Author(s): Gerhard Oberhammer
Publisher: Gerhard Oberhammer

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PAKSILASVAMIN'S INTRODUCTION TO HIS NYAYABHASYAM*
G.R.F. OBERHAMMER
PAKŞILASVĀMIN'S INTRODUCTION TO HIS NYAYABHASYAM' IS perhaps one of the most interesting texts of the older Nyaya indispensable to the understanding of the system. This is not because the ideas expressed therein were not to be surpassed at a later period, but because in it the development of the school appears fixed, as it were, in a "transitory moment" (transitorisches Moment), and we see there for the first time that line of thought, which historically took form in the Nyāya philosophy, becoming aware of itself in
*Abbreviations : NS Nyāyasūtram. Nbh. Nyāyabhāşyam (Poona Oriental Series edition). NV. Nyāyavārttikam (Kashi Sanskrit Series edition). YS Yogasūtram. Ybh. Yogabhāşyam (we quote the Patañjalayogasutrabhāsyavivaranam, Mad
ras Government Oriental Series, No. 94).
1 The Nyāyabhāsyam, a detailed commentary to all parts of the NS, was written by Paksilasvāmin Vatsyāyana about the 2d half of the 5th century A.D. The date of this work can be ascertained from the fact that no trace of the logic of syllogism of Dignāga (480-540 A.D.) can be found in it, while the Yogabhāsyam and the Samkhya teacher Vindhyavasin (1st half of the 5th cent. A.D.) seem to have been known to it. The importance of Paksilasvāmin's Nbh. as basic text of the old Nyāya is especially clear from the fact that it was repeatedly commented upon even up to the 9th century. Thus we know that Bhavivikta (about 520-580 A.D.) wrote a Tīkā to the Nbh., as did also Aviddhakarna. The Nyāyavārtikam of Uddyotakara is likewise a commentary to the Nbh. Probably the Rucițīkā of Adhyayana also dates from this period. Even in the later period there were commentaries on this work. Thus we hear of a Nyāyabhāsyatīkā of Viśvarupa and of a work of a similar name of Vacaspati Misra's teacher Trilocana (about 770-830 A.D.). From the large number of these commentaries, which spread over a period of about three centuries, it is plain, to what great extent the work of Paksilasvāmin was esteemed in the old Nyāya school. Such a work which occupied the best thinkers of the school for centuries could not have gone by without leaving its influence on the system and on the way in which the system determined its own nature. It must have acted as a catalyst for the development of the school, giving to it, at least in its fundamental concepts, its particular turn.
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