Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts Asiatic Society Vol 11

SR No.: 020279
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hariprasad Shastri, Narendrachandra Vedanttirtha, Chintaharan Chakravarti
Publisher: Asiatic Society
Publication Year: 1957
Total Pages: 1052
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Catalogue
File Size: 21 MB

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tamas be the real author of the Nyāyasutra, he must belong to Mithilā and live much near to the Vedic age, as he is mentioned in the Rgveda itself. His Nyāyasūtra must also belong to the same age, as there are internal and external evidences found therein, in that respect. It is rather a biased guess to think that the Nyāyasūtra is not the writing of Akşapāda Gotama himself. If the man be found out, why should his system be in obscurity? We do not see why Aksa pāda Gotama should not compose the Sūtras about the doctrine he preached. It is rather unfair to bring everything down after Sākyasimha Buddha simply because we cannot conceive of the remote past. It may be shown that the Nyāyasūtra was composed by Akşapāda Gotama himself as it was impossible for him to remain satisfied by simply giving an outline of the Nyāya doctrine in the first chapter leaving out the remaining fout chapters to be supplied by another hand in a later period. It can be amply shown from the Buddhist and Jain works that the Madhyamika theory of the 'Void' has not given rise to the discussion of Sunyavāda in the Nyāyasūtra, but that the theory is an old one found even in the oldest Upanişads of the Vedic age. The Buddhist religion can also be shown to be of a very old date, thus disproving the allusion of it in the Nyāyasūtra to be a valid cause of modernity instead of antiquity of the latter.
The Nyāyasūtra; a book of five chapters by . Akşapāda Gotama was commented on by Paksilasvāmin Vătsyāyana, in his Bhāsya,
between B.C. 200 and A.D. 200, Uddyotakara: The-Njáya litera: Bhāradvāja in his Värttika:about the early part of the ture: the com. 6th century A.D., Vācaspati in his Tātparyaţikā about mentators of the Nyāyasūtra. 841 A.D., Udayana in his Parisuddhi and Parisista
(chapter V only) about 984 A.D., Vardhamana in his Parisuddhi-prakāśa or Nyāyanibandha-prakāśa and Parisiśța-prakāśa about 1250 A.D. All these works are linked up together, one with the other in such a way as a single whole that every student of Indian logic and philosophy has to read, re-read and in
digest them. All the above named works have been published and are accessible to scholars. The Nyāyasūtra with Vatsyāyana's Bhäsya and Uddyotakara's Vārttika is available also in English translation.
So far, we have done with the commentators of the Nyāyasūtra, who wrote running commentaries on the book, tried to understand the subject in an ancient philosophical way, not taking to the laboured style of the Navya Nyāya, making the thing more cumbrous by introducing hairsplitting technicalities and whose commentaries are all more or less linked up together, one with the other as a single whole, but there are others who wrote on the Nyāyasūtra, independently of themselves.