Vatsyayana's Commentary on the Nyaya-Sutra a Guide

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Vätsyāyana's Commentary on the Nyaya-sutra is one of classical India's most important philosophical works. This Oxford Guide offers both a map and interpretation of this challenging canonical text, suitable for any student or novice reader.

Treating them as a single hybrid text, the Nyaya-sūtra with Vätsyäyana's Commentary systematizes in skeletal form centuries of ancient Indian philosophical developments concerning logic, epistemology, and dialectics, while also defending a realist categorial metaphysics. It offers a number of epistemological and methodological insights that inform intellectual inquiry in the Subcontinent for over a millennium. Vätsyāyana's Commentary also provides sophisticated arguments for distinct positions in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and value theory that stand amongst the best contributions to world philosophy.

This Oxford Guide, accessible to those not familiar with classical Indian philosophy, provides a distilled understanding of the major scholarly, historical, and philosophical issues that inform the Commentary, while unpacking its philosophical content such that it speaks to modern readers. It also illustrates the way that the Commentary may serve as a lens through which to view the formative period of classical Indian philosophy.

This is a guide to Pakşilasvamin Vätsyāyana's Commentary on the Nyaya-sutra (hereafter Commentary). For those wishing to "travel" to the thought community of classical India to engage with one of its most important philosophical works, this book will serve as something akin to a guidebook, map, and interpreter.

Treated as a single hybrid text, the Nyaya-sūtra with Vätsyäyana's Commentary (abbreviated as NySBh, the Nyaya-sūtra-bhāsya) is a major part of what we could loosely speak of as the Organon of classical India: a collection of works on epistemology, logic, and dialectics by Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Jain thinkers that governed intellectual inquiry in the subcontinent for more than a millennium. Vatsyayana's Commentary also provides ground-breaking arguments for distinct positions in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and value theory that stand among the best contributions to world philosophy.

There are several ways to use a travel guidebook. Ideally, someone relies on one throughout their trip, so they may more easily recognize the contours of the land, navigate important landmarks, and understand the historical and social background that informs the areas to be visited. Even those familiar with a certain locale may consult an expert guide to discover or reconsider points of interest. A guide could be used to develop familiarity with an area that someone considers visiting, helping them gain a sense of the region that will inform their decision. In yet another use-less ideal but certainly plausible-one reads a guide without any intention of visiting directly. A desire to gain greater cultural literacy leads one to use a guide as a cursory but economical substitute for the real thing.

Thanks to my family, Nandanie, Ana, and Leela, who have provided a peaceful and loving home life, supporting my work even in the times when it diverts me from more local obligations and concerns.

I continue to benefit from being situated in that rarest of academic departments where the faculty members are all genuine friends. My colleagues in the Bridgewater State University Department of Philosophy consistently make unheralded sacrifices that allow for an atmosphere of collegiality and kindness, and my work would be much diminished without it. I especially would like to acknowledge the support of our beloved late colleague and friend Laura McAlinden.

I would like to thank BSU's Center for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship for a course release grant that supported my work on Chapter 3 of this book.

One good thing to come out of the quarantine of 2020 was a decision that Malcolm Keating and I made to read Sanskrit texts together, including the Nyaya-sûtra. This practice has continued long after the quarantine ended. I thank him for countless discussions which have improved this project from the very beginning.

Of the scholarly resources that have benefited this project, three have been particularly helpful for tracking down references and ancillary materials: the richly annotated French translation of the Commentary by Michel Angot; the resources subsumed under the "Metaphysics and Epistemology of the Nyaya Tradition" project at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna; and the collection of digitized texts in the Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages.

One of the notable features of scholarly literature in classical India is the use of concise, aphoristic sûtras (literally "threads"). As ancient traditions and attitudes coalesced into distinct philosophical schools during the early centuries of the Common Era, their core holdings and arguments would commonly be summarized within sûtra texts. Presumably, the purpose for this was mnemonic, allowing a student to hold the framework of an entire system within the mind. Sūtra works typically serve as root texts for Brahmanical scholastics during the classical period of Indian philosophy (for our purposes, roughly 200-1000 CE, when the major systems arose and were consolidated).¹ Sūtra texts are also found in other fields, including the study of grammar, religious ritual, ethics, and even the arts of pleasure and romance.

The Nyaya-sutra, attributed to the sage Akşapada Gautama, was compiled and redacted during the early centuries of the Common Era, taking its final form by the end of the fourth century. Nyaya means "rule" and, by extension, "right reasoning" and even "logic." The work could thus be called Sutras on Reasoning. Pioneering textual scholars have proposed that the most ancient core of the Nyaya-sutra consists of the treatises on debate and reasoning (våda-śāstra) housed in the first and fifth chapters, distinguishing them from the robust arguments on sundry topics found in Chapters 2 through 4.2 They suggest that by the time Vatsyayana (c. 425 CE) completed the Commentary, this core had been expanded or grafted to other pre-existing materials to form the text.

We will likely never have enough evidence to give a detailed account of the textual history of the sutras before Vätsyäyana. In any case, the five-chapter Nyaya-sūtra as commented on by him is the canonical version as understood by the ensuing tradition. Combining a manual in logic and debate with arguments for specific positions on just about every major philosophical issue of the day, it stands as the root text for the school simply called Nyaya. Preisendanz (2005, 56) offers a concise summary of the school's influence:

Inasmuch as the art of debate and reasoned argumentation is of relevance to all philosophical and scholarly endeavours, it is not surprising that the Nyaya tradition from early on occupied a central position in South Asian intellectual history, which is reflected in its strong influence on other philosophical traditions and Sanskritic sciences in general, from a doctrinal as well as a formal point of view.