but rather the blowing out and subsiding of all human passions and the peace and quietness which result from it. The meaning of complete annihilation was a later and purely philosophical meaning attached to Nirvâna, and no one certainly could form an idea of what that Nirvâna was meant to be in the Buddhist Nihilistic or Sûnyata-philosophy. I doubt even whether the Upanishads could have given us a description of what they conceived their highest Mukti or perfect freedom to be. In fact they confess themselves (Taitt. Up. II, 4, 1) that 'all speech turns away from the bliss of Brahman, unable to reach it 1,' and when language fails, thought is not likely to fare better.

Means of Salvation.

Turning now to the means by which the Nyâyaphilosophy undertakes to secure the attainment of the summum bonum or Apavarga, we find them enumerated in the following list:

The Sixteen Topics or Padarthas.

(1) Pramâna, means of knowledge; (2) Prameya, objects of knowledge; (3) Samsaya, doubt; (4) Prayogana, purpose; (5) Drishtânta, instance; (6) Siddhânta, established truth; (7) Avayava, premisses; (8) Tarka, reasoning; (9) Nirnaya, conclusion; (10) Vâda, argumentation; (11) Galpa, sophistry; (12) Vitandâ, wrangling, cavilling; (13) Hetvâbhâsa, fallacies; (14) Khala, quibbles; (15)

See a very learned article on Nirvana by Professor Satis Chandra Vidyâbhûshana, in the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society, VI, part i, p. 22.

Gâti, false analogies; (16) Nigrahasthâna, unfitness for arguing.

This may seem a very strange list of the topics to be treated by any philosophy, particularly by one that claims the title of Nyâya or logic. It is clear that in reality the chapters on Pramâna or means of knowledge, and Prameya, objects of knowledge, comprehend the whole of philosophy.

Means of Knowledge.

The four Pramânas, according to Gotama, are Pratyaksha, sensuous perception, Anumâna, inference, Upamâna, comparison, and Sabda, word.

Perception comes first, because inference can only begin to do its work after perception has prepared the way, and has supplied the material to which inference can be applied. Comparison is no more than a subordinate kind of inference, while the Sabda or the word, particularly that of the Veda, depends again, as we should say, on a previous inference by which the authority of the word, more particularly the revealed word, has first been established. Imperfect as this analysis of our instruments of knowledge may seem, it seems to me highly creditable to Indian philosophers that they should have understood the necessity of such an analysis on the very threshold of any system of philosophy. How many misunderstandings might have been avoided if all philosophers had recognised the necessity of such an introductory chapter. If we must depend for all our knowledge, first on our senses, then on our combinatory and reasoning faculties, the question whether revelation falls under the one or the other, or whether it can claim an

independent authority, can far more easily be settled than if such questions are not asked in limine, but turn up casually whenever transcendental problems come to be treated.

Objects of Knowledge.

The objects of knowledge, as given by the Nyâya, comprehend omne scibile, such as body, soul, organs of sense, qualities, cognition, mind, will, fault, death, enjoyment, pain, and final freedom. These objects are afterwards discussed singly, but have of course little to do with logic. Doubt and purpose mark the first steps towards philosophical discussion, instances and established truths supply materials, while premisses and reasoning lead on to the conclusion which disputants wish to reach. From Nos. 10 to 16, we have rules for dialectic rather than for logic. We are taught how to meet the artifices of our antagonists in a long argumentation, how to avoid or to resist sophistry, wrangling, fallacies, quibbles, false analogies, and downright misstatements, in fact, how to defend truth against unfair antagonists.

If from our point of view we deny the name of logic to such problems, we should be perfectly justified, though a glance at the history of Greek philosophy would show us that, before logic became an independent branch of philosophy it was likewise mixed up with dialectic and with questions of some more special interest, the treatment of which led gradually to the elaboration of general rules of thought, applicable to all reasoning, whatever its subject may be.

It is quite clear that these sixteen topics should

on no account be rendered, as they mostly have been, by the sixteen categories. Categories are the praedicabilia, or whatever can be predicated, and however much the meaning of this term may have been varied by European philosophers, it could never have been so far extended as to include wrangling, fallacies, quibbles and all the rest. We shall see that the six or seven Padârthas of the Vaiseshikas correspond far more nearly to the categories of the Aristotelian and afterwards of European philosophy in general.

Padartha, Object.

Nothing shows so well the philosophical character of the Sanskrit language than this very word Padârtha, which has been translated by category. It means in ordinary Sanskrit simply a thing, but literally it meant Artha, the meaning, the object, Pada, of a word. What we should call objects of thought, they called far more truly objects of words, thus showing that from the earliest times they understood that no thought was possible except in a word, and that the objects of our knowledge became possible only after they had been named. Their language passed through an opposite process to that of Latin. Latin called every kind of knowledge or all known things gnomina, from g)nosco, to know; but after a time, and after the initial g had been dropped, as we drop it involuntarily in gnat, their gnomina became nomina, and were then supposed to be something different from the old and forgotten gnomina; they became nomina, i. e. mere

names.

Six Padarthas of Vaiseshika.

According to the Vaiseshikas, we have six Padârthas, i. e. six general meanings, categories or predicates, to which all words i. e. all things can be referred. All known things must be either substances (9), qualities (24), or motions, the last meaning, however, more than mere local movement, so as to correspond in fact to our activity or even to our becoming (Werden). Knowledge (Buddhi) is here treated as one of the qualities of the soul, which itself is one of the substances, so that many things which with us belong to psychology and logic, are treated by the Vaiseshikas under this head.

The next two, the general and the particular, comprehend what is shared in common by many objects, and what is peculiar to one, and thus distinguishes it from all others.

Samavâya or intimate connection is a very useful name for a connection between things which cannot exist one without the other, such as cause and effect, parts and the whole, and the like. It comes very near to the Avinâbhâva, i. e. the Not-withoutbeing, and should be carefully distinguished from mere conjunction or succession.

The seventh category, Abhâva, or negation, was added, it would seem, at a later time, and can be applied to previous, to present or to subsequent non-existence, or even to absolute Abhâva.

Madhava's Account of Nyâya.

In order to see what, in the eyes of native scholars, the Nyâya-philosophy was meant to achieve, it may be useful to look at an account of it given