On Appaya Dīkṣita's Engagement with Vyāsatīrtha's Tarkatāṇḍava (Journal of Indological Studies, 2016-2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article is the first study of Appayya DakXita's Upakramapar@krama. Here he attacks Vy@satartha's new and provocative argument according to which the hermeneutic protocols of Vedic passages always assumed that the closing of a passage overrides its opening. Appayya offers a systematic refutation of Vy@satartha's examples in an effort to show that sequence matters and that, as was known at least since the time of Śabara, it is the opening that outweighs the closing and not the other way around. But, as the article shows, midway through the work the author presents a new and comprehensive theory that, he believes, underlies both Mam@:s@ and Ved@nta reading protocols, one in which sequence is completely immaterial. The article argues that the tension between these two voices is not entirely resolvable and is, moreover, emblematic of the author's intellectual legacy and of scholarly work in his period more generally.
Anyathākhyāti: A Critique by Appaya Dīksita in the Parimala (Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2009)
In this paper, the problem of illusory perception, as approached by the Nyāya and Advaita Vedānta schools of philosophy, is discussed from the standpoint of the Parimala. This seminal work belonging to the Bhāmatī tradition of Advaita Vedānta was composed in the sixteenth century by the polymath Appaya Dīksita. In the context of discussing various theories of illusion, Dīksita dwells upon the Nyāya theory of anyathākhyāti, and its connection with jñānalaksanapratyāsatti as a causal factor for perception, and closely examines if such an extraordinary (alaukika) perception is tenable to explain illusory perception. He then proceeds to point out the deficiencies of this model and thereby brings to the fore the anirvacanīyakhyāti of Advaitins as the only theory which stands scrutiny.
Anyathakhyati: A Critique by Appaya Diksita in the Parimala
2000
In this paper, the problem of illusory perception, as approached by the Nyaya and Advaita Vedanta schools of philosophy, is discussed from the standpoint of the Parimala. This seminal work belonging to the Bhamatõ¯ tradition of Advaita Vedanta was composed in the sixteenth century by the polymath Appaya Dõ¯ks:ita. In the context of discussing various theories of illusion, Dõ¯ks:ita dwells
Existence and Perception in medieval Vedānta: Vyāsatīrtha’s Defence of Realism in the Nyāyāmṛta
Existence and Perception in medieval Vedānta: Vyāsatīrtha’s Defence of Realism in the Nyāyāmṛta, 2024
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the individuals and organisations who supported me in the writing of this volume. The volume was mainly completed under the framework of the project "Religion and Reason in the Vedānta Traditions of Medieval India", which ran from 2017 to 2021. The project was hosted by the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and funded entirely by the Austrian Science Fund (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung/FWF; project number 30622). The FWF further provided financial assistance for the production of this volume and for making it available as an openaccess work. The writing of the volume was also supported by a generous grant from the Jan Gonda foundation. This grant allowed me to work for six months at the International Institute of Asian Studies and the University of Leiden in 2016. This gave me time to write several chapters now included in the book and to work on developing my translations of relevant Sanskrit texts. My sincerest gratitude goes out to my colleague Marcus Schmücker, who is presently senior researcher at the IKGA. Marcus has had the single biggest influence of any individual over this volume. He acted as the leader of the Religion and Reason project and encouraged and supported me in all aspects of preparing the volume. He read through my drafts carefully and provided me with extensive feedback which has enhanced it considerably. In particular, I must thank him for his careful scrutiny of my explanations of Advaita philosophy and extensive discussions about the translation of Sanskrit texts. I must also thank him for all his advice on the publication process and general encouragement to persevere with writing this volume. The volume is ultimately based on my PhD thesis written at the University of Manchester. I must thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom, which funded my PhD research. I would like to thank Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, my supervisor, for all her ideas and advice when preparing it. The comments of Professors Christopher Minkowski and Ram-Prasad Chakravarti made during the defence of my thesis also helped me develop the thesis into the present monograph. I would also like to extend my thanks to members of the Mādhva tradition. In 2010, I read the Nyāyāmr̥ ta and its commentaries with Professor D. Prahladachar, who is now Śrī Vidyāśrīśatīrtha, the head of the Vyāsarāya Maṭha. His profound insight into the Nyāyāmr̥ ta and its commentaries has always been inspiring. I must also thank Prof. Veeranarayana Pandurangi of Karnataka Samskrit University, who worked with me studying Vyāsatīrtha's texts and the works of Navya-Nyāya philosophers while I was preparing this volume. He helped me to understand the Navya-Nyāya language which features so prominently in the texts translated in this book.
Appayyadīkṣita’s Invention of Śrīkaṇṭha’s Vedānta
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2014
Apart from his voluminous, immensely learned, and spectacularly successful contributions to the fields of Hermeneutics (Mīmāṁ sā), non-dualist Metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta), and poetics, the sixteenth century South Indian polymath Appayyadīkṡita is famed for reviving from obscurity the moribund Ś aivite Vedānta tradition represented by the (thirteenth century?) Brahmasūtrabhāṣya of Ś rīkaṅt˙ha. Appayya's voluminous commentary on this work, his Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, not only reconstitutes Ś rīkaṅt˙ha's system, but radically transforms it, making it into a springboard for Appayya's own highly original critiques of standard views of Mīmāṁ sā and Vedānta. Appayya addresses long sections of his commentary to matters dealt with glancingly or not at all in the root text, drawing conclusions which Ś rīkaṅt˙ha nowhere endorses. Furthermore, the distinctive positions Appayya develops in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā feed into Appayya's other works in ways that have so far been largely ignored by modern scholars. For example, most or all the discussions Appayya's Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā, twenty-seven essays on scattered topics in Mīmāṁ sā and Vedānta, build on arguments first advanced in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā-most notably Appayya's totally original theory of the signification of adjectives, first developed in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, the full elaboration and defense of which takes up fully sixteen of the twenty-seven essays that make up the Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā.
Early Indian Epistemology and Logic. Fragments from Jinendrabuddhi's Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā 1 and 2
Studia Philologica Buddhica. Monograph Series XXXV, 2017
A collection of fragments and reports contained in Jinendrabuddhi's commentary on the first two chapters of Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya-(vṛtti) which deal with the validity of cogbnitions, perception, and inference. The material collected can mostly be attributed to the pre-Dignāga period of epistemological thought and stems from various long lost works of the brahminical traditions of Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Mīmāṃsā, as well as from Vasubandhu's Vādavidhi. The collection provides new insight into the first post-systematic period of Indian thought that focussed on the foundation of knowledge to be able to support the respective systematic edifices and about which very little was known so far. The texts are presented systematically with philological arguments and translations, and are identified for reference with a view to subsequent collections from the remaining chapters of this work as its edition progresses.
A Study of the Advaita Vedāntic Critique of Anyathākhyātivāda
2021
We usually discuss the question of determining the logical meaning of error and that of finding out the psychological conditions under which error is made possible. It is important to consider the general implications of those judgments regarding the ontological status of an illusory object. Unlike their Western counterpart, the investigation of an erroneous cognition has drawn the special attention of ancient philosophers of India. As a result, in Indian philosophy there are different theories of error which are propounded by different philosophers in accordance with the ontological schemes of their schools of philosophy. This paper is an attempt to critically discuss the Naiyāyikas’ view of error called Anyathākhyātivāda with special attention to the Advaita Vedāntic critique of it. It is interesting to analyze different new arguments that have been developed by the later philosophers of these schools. The investigation of an erroneous cognition by the philosophers of Advaita Vedā...
Reasoning as a Science, Its Role in Early Dharma Literature, and the Emergence of the Term nyāya
Brendan S. Gillon (ed.), Logic in Earliest Classical India, Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference Held in Helsinki, Finland, 13-18 July 2003, 2010
THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOGIC IN INDIA Previous research on the early development of Indian logic and its cultural background has placed a great deal of emphasis on the evidence provided by the early classical Āyurvedic tradition. To be sure, the probably already pre-classical tradition of debate with its inherent concern about convincing and correct procedures of proof contains important seeds for the development of logic, and its treatment found a special place in the Carakasaühitā. I will discuss in detail elsewhere the diametrically opposed positions of the pioneering Indian scholars in this area, namely, Satishchandra Vidyabhusana and Surendranath Dasgupta, as regards the relationship between, on the one hand, the medical tradition, and, on the other, the early theories about debate and reflections on the proto-logical concepts embedded in it as exemplified by the Carakasaühitā. 1 In this connection I take a middle position between their rather extreme views and attempt to demonstrate the particular importance of debateresponsible for an intense intellectual interest in it-in the medical context, drawing on the diverse evidence provided by the Carakasaühitā itself. This interest, I argue, not only led to some specific