Essay name: The Navya-Nyaya theory of Paksata (Study)
Author:
Kazuhiko Yamamoto
Affiliation: Savitribai Phule Pune University / Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit Languages
This essay studies the Navya-Nyaya theory of Paksata within Indian logic by exploring the Paksataprakarana on the Tattvacintamani of Gangesa Upadhyaya and the Didhiti of Raghunata Siromani. The term 鈥減aksa鈥� originally meant a subject or proposition but evolved to signify a key logical term, representing the subject of an inference or the locus of inference.
Section 1 - History and Development of the Concept of Paksata
68 (of 69)
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73
And paksata is required to know about the subject in the
Navyanyaya period. The subjectness is thought by Gangesa as a
qualified absence (visista-abhava). And Gangesa also established
paksa as desired subject. The commentators
The commentators
on the Tattvacintamani
interpret Gangesa's definition of pak峁t膩. Yajnapati's
Tattvacintamaniprabha is the oldest commentary on the Tattva-
cintamani available today. He shows us one kind of solution of
time gap problem between a confirmatory cognition (paramarsa) and
an inferential cognition. That is, after a destruction of the
first confirmatory cognition, there arises another confirmatory
cognition. But Jayadeva criticizes this solution in his
Tattvacint膩ma峁噛aloka. Jayadeva thinks that a desire has a
compatibility (yogyata), therefore an inferential cognition can
arise after the time gap of two or three moments. But Raghunatha
asks that if compatibility is possible to be postulated to the
desire, compatibility is also possible to be postulated to the
cognition of probandum (siddhi), then the inferential cognition
does not arise. Likewise, in the Tattvacintamanid墨dhiti,
4 Raghunatha thinks of all the possibilities of the interpretation
of Gangesa's definition.
on
After Raghunatha's D墨dhiti, many commentaries were written
the Didhiti. Krsnadasa Sarvabhauma wrote the
4. Vide Part one, chapter D, 9-11 and 13, and part two,
chapter B, text-22f.
