CHAPTER VIII.

NYAYA AND VALSESHIKA.

Relation between Nyaya and Vaiseshika.

WHILE in the systems hitherto examined, particularly in the Vedanta, Sâmkhya, and Yoga, there runs a strong religious and even poetical vein, we now come to two systems, Nyâya and Vaiseshika, which are very dry and unimaginative, and much more like what we mean by scholastic systems of philosophy, businesslike expositions of what can be known, either of the world which surrounds us or of the world within, that is, of our faculties or powers of perceiving, conceiving, or reasoning on one side, and the objects which they present to us, on the other.

It should be remembered that, like the Sâmkhya and Yoga, and to a certain extent like the Purva and Uttara-Mîmâmsâ, the Nyâya and Vaiseshika also have by the Hindus themselves been treated as forming but one discipline. We possess indeed a separate body of Nyâya-Sutras and another of Vaiseshika-Sutras, and these with their reputed authors, Gotama and Kanada, have long been accepted as the original sources whence these two streams of the ancient philosophy of India proceeded. But we know now that the literary style which sprang up naturally in what I called the Sûtra-period, the period to which the first attempts at a written in place of a purely

mnemonic literature may have to be ascribed, was by no means restricted to that ancient period, but continued to be so well imitated in later times that we find it used with great success not only in the Sâmkhya-Sutras, which are later than Mâdhava (1350 A.D.), but in more modern compositions also. It should always be borne in mind that the Sûtras ascribed to Gotama and Kanâda presuppose a long previous development of philosophical thought, and instead of regarding the two as two independent streams, it seems far more likely that there existed at first an as yet undifferentiated body of half philosophical half popular thought, bearing on things that can be known, the Padârthas, i.e. omne scibile, and on the means of acquiring such knowledge, from which at a later time, according to the preponderance of either the one or the other subject, the two systems of Vaiseshika and Nyâya branched off. These two systems shared of course many things in common, and hence we can well understand that at a later time they should have been drawn together again and treated as one, as we see in Sivâditya's Saptapadârthî (about 1400 A.D.), in the Bhâshâ-Parikkheda, with its commentary the Muktâvali, in the Tarkasamgraha, the Tarkakaumudî, the Tarkâmrita, &c. For practical purposes it is certainly preferable that we should follow their example and thus avoid the necessity of discussing the same subjects twice over. There may have been an old Tarka, very like our Tarkasamgraha, the one before the bifurcation of the old system of Ânvîkshikî, the other after the confluence of the two. But these are as yet conjectures only, and may have to remain mere conjectures always, so that, in the present state of our know

ledge, and depending, as we have to do, chiefly on the existing Sûtras as the authorities recognised in India itself, we must not attempt a historical treatment, but treat each system by itself in spite of unavoidable repetitions.

A very zealous native scholar, Mahâdeo Râjârâm Bodas, in the Introduction to his edition of the Tarkasamgraha, has indeed promised to give us some kind of history of the Nyâya-philosophy in India. But unfortunately that period in the historical development of the Nyâya which is of greatest interest to ourselves, namely that which preceded the composition of the Nyâya-Sûtras, had by him also to be left a blank, for the simple reason that nothing is known of Nyâya before Gotama. The later periods, however, have been extremely well treated by Mr. Bodas, and I may refer my readers to him for the best information on the subject. Mr. Bodas places the Sûtras of Gotama and Kanâda in the fifth or fourth cent. B.C.; and he expresses a belief that the Vaiseshika, nay even the Sâmkhya, as systems of thought, were anterior to Buddha, without however adducing any new or certain proofs.

Dignaga.

Dates are the weak points in the literary history of India, and, in the present state of our studies, any date, however late, should be welcome. In former years to assign the Kapila-Sutras to the fourteenth or even fifteenth century A. D., would have seemed downright heresy. Was not Kâlidâsa himself assigned to a period long before the beginning of our era? It seems now generally accepted that Kâlidâsa really belonged to the sixth century A. D., and this

date of Kâlidâsa may help us to a date for the Sûtras of Gotama, valuable to us, though it may be despised by those who imagine that the value of Sanskrit literature depends chiefly on its supposed remote antiquity. I have pointed out1 that, according to native interpreters, Kâlidâsa alluded to the logician Dignâga in a verse of his Meghadûta 2. We may suppose therefore that Dignaga was considered a contemporary of Kâlidâsa. of Kâlidâsa. Now Dignâga is said by Vâkaspati Misra, in his Nyâya-vârttikatâtparya-tikâ, to have interpreted the Nyâya aphorisms of Gotama in a heterodox or Buddhist sense, while Uddyotakara wrote his commentary to refute his interpretation and to restore that of Pakshilasvâmin. If Vâkaspati Misra is right, we should be allowed to place Dignâga in the sixth century, and assign the same or rather an earlier date to the Sutras of Gotama, as explained by him and other Nyaya philosophers. So late a date may not seem to be worth much, still I think it is worth having. Several other dates may be fixed by means of that of Dignaga as I tried to show in the passage quoted above (India, pp. 307 seq.).

A more comprehensive study of Buddhist literature may possibly shed some more light on the chronology of the later literature of the Brâhmans, if I am right in supposing that in the beginning the followers of Buddha broke by no means so entirely, as has generally been supposed, with the literary traditions of the Brahmans. It is quite intelligible

1 India, p. 307.

See also Prof. Satis Chandra Vidyabhushana in Journal of Buddhist Text Society, IV, parts iii, and iv, p. 16.

why among the various systems of Hindu philosophy the Buddhists should have paid little attention to the two Mîmâmsâs, concerned as they both were with the Veda, an authority which the Buddhists had rejected. But there was no reason why the Buddhists should forswear the study of either the Nyaya or Vaiseshika systems, or even the Sâmkhya system, though making their reserves on certain points, such as the existence of an Îsvara, which was admitted by the Nyâyas, but denied by Buddha. We know that at the court of Harsha, Brâhmans, Bauddhas, and Gainas were equally welcome (India, pp. 307 seq.). We know from Chinese travellers such as Hiouen-thsang that Vasubandha, for instance, before he became a Buddhist, had read with his master, Vinayabhadra or Samghabhadra', not only the books of the eighteen schools which were Buddhist, but also the six Tîrthya philosophies, clearly meant for the six Brahmanic systems of philosophy. This Vasubandha, as a very old man, was actually the teacher of Hiouen-thsang, who travelled in India from 629 to 648 A.D. Therefore in Vasubandha's time all the six systems of Indian philosophy must have been in existence, in the form of Sûtras or Kârikâs. For we possess, in one case at least, a commentary by Pakshila-svâmin or Vâtsyâyana on the Nyâya-Sûtras, the same as those which we possess, and we know that the same Sûtras were explained afterwards by Dignâga, the Buddhist. This Buddhist commentary was attacked by Uddyotakara, a Brâhman, of the sixth century, while in the beginning of the seventh century Dharmakîrtti,

1 See also Journal of Buddhist Text Society, 1896, p. 16.