Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

SR No.: 011115
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1939
Total Pages: 440
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 68

NATURE AND FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
49
contirms a pramāṇa which brings about the knowledge in question, i.e. 18 auxiliary to the pramāņa (pramānānugrāhaka).
There are five kinds of tarka. These are called ātmāśraya, anyonyāśraya, cakraka, anavasthā and tadanyabādhitārthaprasanga. In all of them the logical form and character of the argument is the same, and they serve the same end of testing the validity of some reasoning or judgment.
Ātmāśraya 18 an argument that brings out the inconsistency involved in a reasoning which seeks to prove that anything is dependent on itself in respect of its origin or duration or cognition The argument may be stated in this form 'If A is the cause of A, it must be different from itself, because the cause is different from the effect.'
Anyonyāśraya is an argument which brings out the contradiction involved in the judgment that two things are reciprocally dependent on each other. The argument may be stated thus: “If A depends on B, and B depends on A, A cannot depend on B.' To say that ‘B depends on A'is virtually to deny that 'A depends on B.' The idea of reciprocal dependence, which is so much favoured by some Western thinkers, is rejected by the ancient Indian thinkers as self-contradictory and absurd.
The third type of tarka is called cakraka. It consists in exposing the fallacy of a reasoning in which a thing is made to explain the pre-supposition of its own pre-supposition (tada peksyapeksyapekṣitva). If A is pre-supposed in B and B is pre-supposed in C, then to explain A by C is to reason in a circle, because C by its inherent limitations leads us back to A. Starting from A we are referred to C as the ground of its explanation, but to explain C we are
1 TB ,P 32. 2 NSV , 1.1. 40.
7-(1117 B)