Dignaga (480-540 CE) was born into a Brahmin family in Simhavakta near Kanchipuram.

He
defended the view that a real kind of personality exists which is independent of the elements
composing it. Dignaga totally annuls sensory perception and thoughts involving concepts and
inference. There is no conceptualisation in sensory perception. Perception is a direct experience
of objective reality that consists of a flux of unique and momentary particulars.

Perception is indescribable as they do not share any common features. The categories that the
Nyaya-Vaiseshika realists claim to find in the world are imposed by the minds. Conceptual
thought and language dealt generally. Simple concepts have no objective general features. They
are causally related to the realities and arbitrary fictional inventions. There is a gap between how
the minds work and the way things are at. Thought and language cannot be separated.
Conceptual thought is born out of language and language is again born out of concepts.
Interpretation of sensory impressions is through conceptual construction. Unique particulars are
grouped together and it is understood as continuing objects bearing types of assets.

Dignaga inherits the terms svalakshana and Samanya and lakshana from the Abhidharma
tradition. Svalak-sbana is an individual basic atomic factor as it is in itself. It means the common
features to dharmas when their combinations produce trained formations. Non-eternity,
unsatisfactoriness and lack of permanent identity are included in such generalities. The notion of
the unique instant particular is modeled on the Abhidharma notion of dharma, however rejects
their view that each atomic factor has an unchanging essence. He has paid a considerable
contribution to the theory of inference.

Dignaga was an indirect student of Vasubandhu. Aspects of Yogachara and Sautrantika theories
of perception were combined with his own innovative logical methodology. He has written a
number of books on Abhidharma and Pramana. The work deals with the problems regarding
sense-perception and its role in knowledge, knowledge reliability and the relationship between
sensations, images, concepts, and the external world. His Pramana-samuccaya is a work that
laid the foundations of Buddhist logic. He defined perception in anew manner. He regarded only
pure sensation as perception. In his inference theory he distinguished between inference for
oneself and inference for the other. His Hetucakra was his first work on formal logic. It is a bridge
between the older doctrine of trairuupia and Dignaga`s own later theory of vyaapti. He had
introduced a new form of deductive reasoning. Other works include The Treatise on the Objects
of Cognition and The Treatise on the Correct Principles of Logic which were written in an effort to
establish the valid sources of knowledge.