Epistemology in the Schools of Indian Philosophy

Problems and Prospects

(Keynote Address)
Prof. D. Prahladachar
January 24, 2007
Sankar

At the outset, I heartily compliment the Department of Philosophy, Sr

acarya
University of Sanskrit, Kalady, for organizing this seminar to discuss the problems and
prospects of epistemology in the schools of Indian philosophy.
In this country, only the Nyaya school has epistemology as its major concern,
but the other schoolsincluding Carvaka, Bauddha, Jaina, Sankhya, Vaises.ika, P
urva
Mmamsa and Uttara Mmamsanever overlooked the importance of epistemology
though their major concerns are with materialism, ontology, rituals, or metaphysics,
with epistemology being just a tributary body of knowledge. Rather, knowing very
well that the theories or doctrines that their systems of philosophy propound can be
firmly established only on the basis of the praman.as, they developed their sciences
of epistemology with all the vigor needed for such an effort. Since each school of
philosophy had a distinct set of tenets as its siddhanta or settled doctrine, the view of
epistemology developed by each system was naturally influenced by the corresponding
siddhanta view that it was meant to serve. I firmly believe that this influence of the
siddhanta views made a great impact on the concepts with regard to the nature of the
episteme, that these schools discussed, over the course of several centuries. This was the
root cause of the divergence that we witness among the various Indian epistemological
theories.
It is also an indisputable fact that the epistemological theories of these various
Indian philosophical systems, which took their present final shapes as the results of
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continual deliberations occurring over many generations to answer pertinent questions,

are very profound for being supported by very strong arguments, and deserve careful
consideration. The theory of validity is one such example. The various arguments
advanced by different schools such as the Buddhist, the Nyaya, the P
urva Mmamsa,
with respect to their respective stands on this matter, are indeed bewildering. Do we
invariably grasp the truth of a cognition immediately when it occurs, without relying on
any extraneous circumstances?this was the question that bothered philosophers for
a long time. The intensity with which the philosophers sought to defend their positions

is amazing. When the great Sankar

acarya went to Mahismati Nagara in search of the
Mmamsaka Man.d.ana Misra, it is said that some women carrying pots of water on
arya to his destination, saying:
their heads guided the Ac
svatah. praman.am
. paratah. praman.am
. krangana yatra giram
. vadanti |
dvarasthand.antarasanniruddhah. janhi tatpan.d.itaman.d.anaukah. k
The debate is still ongoing. Even now, a Naiyayika would put forth the same
arguments as his ancient predecessors, and these would be met by a Mmamsaka with
the same counter-arguments with which early Mmamsakas assailed the Nyaya position.
The serious question to be considered now is, however, Are we engaged in the
study of philosophy, in the true sense of the term? We now find two kinds of Indian
philosophers. Philosophers of one kind have a good command over Sanskrit and have
sufficient depth in their respective branches of learning. Though many of them are
exposed to English, they often do not have the necessary ability to either present or
discuss philosophical problems in that language. Philosophers belonging to the second
group have a very good command over the English language, and especially have the
skill to present philosophical problems using the symbolic notation of mathematical
logic. However, they do not have direct access to the original philosophical texts in
Sanskrit, and though some of them can follow Sanskrit to a certain extent, they largely
do not have the necessary familiarity with the Navya Nyaya terminology that has been
used extensively not only in the Nyaya texts but also in the works of other schools.
In this regard, I would like to share an experience I had recently in an international
conference. In one of the sessions a Pandit of Navya Nyaya presented a paper on the
mind-boggling innovative method of anugama invented by the Navya Nyaya school to
defend a scholarly definition from a variety of objections that would otherwise render
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it completely meaningless. The Pandit explained with great ease, in fluent Sanskrit,
the intricacies of an anugama, with an illustration involving many relations within
relations.
However, the participants in the conference who had attended with a lot of interest
were greatly disappointed, for they could understand nothing.
In another session that I attended, a Western scholar presented a paper on a topic
related to Nyaya. This scholar, being well-versed in symbolic logic, presented the paper
using the symbols profusely. By the discussion that followed, I could guess that the
paper was very well received. However, I was personally very disappointed because I
could not understand anything. During an interval between sessions, I asked one of
the scholars who took part in the discussion about the content of the paper that had
been discussed. He said that the paper discussed the Nyaya stand that no property
is sva-vr.tti self-resident. He further explained that the paper concluded that the
Nyaya school cannot reject the existence of some properties that are self-resident. For
instance, the kevalanvayi properties such as knowability have to be admitted by the
Naiyayika as self-resident, for otherwise such properties would lose their characteristic
of being kevalanvayi. Again, he said, the paper pointed out that at least the property
of asva-vr.ttitva, i.e., not being self-resident, will have to be accepted as a sva-vr.tti.
For if asva-vr.ttitva were not there in asva-vr.ttitva, it would mean that it possessed the
absence of it, which of course is nothing but sva-vr.ttitva. On the other hand, if asvavr.ttitva is there in asva-vr.ttitva, sva-vr.ttitva will have to be admitted as a property of
asva-vr.ttitva.
I said that the Navya Nyaya tradition has an answer to this argument.
Knowability, though a kevalanvayi, is not accepted by the Nyaya tradition as a
self-resident property. The reason is that though the properties of knowability, i.e.,
fitness to be the content of knowledge, are there in all objects, as all objects are the
contents at least of Gods knowledge, knowability is not a single property residing
in all objects. It is, rather, different in each object. This is because it is neither a
generality nor an akhan.d.opadhi. Thus, though knowability is different in each object,
no single object has the absolute absence (atyanta-abhava) of knowability, for each
one has a knowability. Hence, no knowability can be said to be the absentee of an
absolute absence. Therefore, each and every knowability is kevalanvayi and yet is
not self-resident.
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Similarly, asva-vr.ttitva is also neither a jati nor an akhan.d.opadhi, and hence, though
it is present in all properties, it differs in each property. Therefore, though the property
of asva-vr.ttitva itself has a property of asva-vr.ttitva, the resident asva-vr.ttitva and the
substratum asva-vr.ttitva are not identical. Hence, the contention that no property is
self-resident holds good.
After listening to my arguments, my friend admitted that the issue is still open for
discussion, and the conclusion arrived at in the paper cannot be taken to be final.
I am narrating this incident just to highlight the problems that the Indian philosophy, of which epistemology is a branch, is facing today. Some years ago, a small
article appeared in the Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, under
the caption, Is Nyaya Dead? The author made the charge that the Nyaya school has
effectively ceased to exist as it has nothing new to offer thinkers. I did not consider the
article worth responding to, and do not recall anyone else responding to it either. It was
clear that the author was never a student of Nyaya and just had a superficial familiarity with the sastra through some secondary sources. Even so, the question, indirectly
posed to the present-day Indian traditional philosopher by the author of that article,
to wit: Have you ever made any serious attempt to acquaint philosophers trained in
the Western tradition of philosophy, with the Indian philosophical theories?remains
a daunting one.
Historians agree that epistemology emerged as a distinct theoretical discipline in ancient India and ancient Greece centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. It is
also accepted that the Western philosophical logic, which has been primarily concerned
with the characterization and systematization of valid modes of deduction, began in
Greece as a deduction-centered discipline, and still remains the same in essence. As
against this, in India formal logic is more concerned with the problem of validity of
inference, and has focused primarily on the relation of vyapti. Some are skeptical about
the existence of formal logic in India, but if we can describe formal logic as a theory of
content-neutral notions having an essential role in the articulation of a theory of truth,
we can confidently assert that Indian logic definitely has this characteristic.
Now, the need of the hour is to make the Indian philosophical texts, including the
Navya Nyaya epistemological texts, accessible to scholars trained in the Western tradition of philosophy and logic; and likewise the Western philosophical texts to scholars
trained in the Indian traditions. In fact, a beginning was made in the year 1951 by
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Dr. Daniel H.H. Ingalls through his pioneering work Materials for the Study of Navya
Ny
aya. Later, this was continued by eminent scholars like Bimal Krishna Motilal, D.C.
Guha, J.N. Mohanty, Sibajiban Bhattacharya, and others. In the 1980s, Prof. M.P.
Rege, who has been hailed as the Frege of India, and Prof. Dayakrishnan arranged
many workshops with the assistance of the Ford Foundation and the Indian Council of
Philosophical Research, to train Indian traditional scholars in symbolic logic and also to
teach Indian epistemological texts to scholars of the Western tradition. Very recently,
Prof. P. Ramachandrudu of Hyderabad has written a work in lucid Sanskrit titled
Pascatya Darsanetihasa, to introduce Western philosophy to traditional scholars. Last
year, Prof. Arindam Chakravarti of the University of Hawaii wrote a comparatively
small but beautiful Sanskrit work published by the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha,
Tirupati, giving an introduction to modern Western epistemological trends.
Even with all these efforts, I must say, we are not in a happy situation. In the
conferences of international stature, our traditional scholars who though small in number are the torch-bearers of ancient Indian philosophy with their ability to interpret
very tough classical texts, do not have the facility to present their ideas with ease
using Western methods. Scholars trained in the Western tradition who can discourse
with Indian traditional scholars making use of Navya Nyaya technical terms are rarer
still. For the survival of the Indian philoophical systems, I feel some sustained efforts
need to be initiated. My suggestion is that at the Sanskrit Universities and the Sanskrit Departments at other Universities where Indian philosophical texts are taught to
students, symbolic logic and Western philosophy should be introduced through the English language. Similarly, philosophy departments in the Universities should introduce
Navya Nyaya texts, and these should be taught in Sanskrit. If proper arrangements
are made to impart some working knowledge of Sanskrit, it is not that difficult to do
this.
Some historians of Indian logic claim that Greek logicians were influenced by the
ancient Indian logicians. They also claim that the most learned Greek philosophers
such as Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato journeyed to India and had discussions
with Indian intellectuals. All these may be mere speculations, but what should not
be missed is that this country had a glorious past in the field of philosophy. Great
philosophical texts that are masterpieces in the true sense of the term bear testimony
to this glory. I sincerely hope that seminars of this kind help us not only to understand
them correctly, but also to develop the knowledge further.
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