[Advaita-l] yoga in advaita vedA.nta - nyAya - and OUR six systems

[Ram Garib]

--- Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com> wrote:

> nyAya is used to
> establish the thesis; yoga as a means; vySeshikaa is
> so interwined with nyAya
> that navyanyAya actually is the amlagamation of
> them; 

In his Introduction to the Navya-Nyaya System of
Logic, by D.Ch. Guha, Prof. Ingalls says:

A Western philosopher with whom I used to argue once
expressed a prejudice in somewhat the following terms:
"The Indians", he said, "were never really interested
in philosophy. They were interested in religion. Their
philosophy always leads to a religious or mystical
goal, which is all very fine, I dare say, but it is
not what I call philosophy; it is not at all the sort
of things that I am interested in." He admitted that
his knowledge of the subject was limited to
translations of religious texts and to selections from
Buddhist and Vedanta idealism, and he agreed to read
any two books I should give him before reasserting his
judgment. I gave him two translations of Navya-nyaya
texts. Actually, they were the only translations of
Navya-nyaya available at that time. My philosopher had
hard work of it but persevered, until one day he said,
"I admit I was hasty. Your Navya-nyaya is talking
about problems of philosophy all right, problems that
interest me greatly. My only trouble now is that I
find their talk so difficult to understand."

The anecdote points to a common misconception. Even
Indians nowadays for the most part are unaware of the
extent of their rationalist literature, a literature
which deals with mathematics, astronomy, grammar,
semantics and logic. Even the many-faceted Vedanta has
a strong complement of non-theological rationalists.
Of special importance in this respect, however, is the
literature of the Navya-nyaya, for that school
specialized in epistemology, logic and semantics. Some
would have the Navya-nyaya begin with Udayanacarya
(1000 A. D.), some with Gangesa (1400 A. D.), some
only with Raghunatha (1475-1550 A. D.). But even by
the most restricted view the school can claim hundreds
of texts. From the published texts of Navya-nyaya,
which form less than a tenth of what lies buried in
manuscripts, one may see that the Indian genius
erected noble edifices of rationalism as well as the
edifices of theology and mysticism that are better
known to the cultural 'tourist trade'. 


		
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