The Colas c11.82

c11.82

Recent discussions centering round the twenty-ninth canto of the *Maṇimēkalai* and its relation to Diṅnāga’s *Nyāyapravēśa* have turned out to be less conclusive than they appeared at first. The resemblance between the *Nyāyapravēśa* and this canto of the *Maṇimēkalai* is, doubtless, ‘so complete that the *Nyāyapravēśa* must be supposed to be either inserted in or extracted out of the *Maṇimēkalai*.’¹¹⁶ We may go further and assert with some confidence that the *Nyāyapravēśa* has been inserted in the *Maṇimēkalai*.¹¹⁷ But one can hardly fail to notice that a different and a simpler exposition of logical principles has already been given earlier in the canto,¹¹⁸ and that the exposition of fallacies in accordance with the *Nyāyapravēśa* has come in as a clumsy afterthought, introduced by the impossible statement¹¹⁹ that *upanaya* and *nigamana* may be subsumed under *dṛṣṭānta*. This statement gives, in our view, the clue to the real history of the chapter. In its original form it contained only the exposition which takes the first place in the chapter, was pre-Diṅnāga in its content, and stood for a syllogism of five members. Some pious student of Diṅnāga, in his anxiety to glorify his master, by giving a rendering of the *Nyāyapravēśa* to the Tamil world, hit on the idea of putting it into the standard romance of Tamil Buddhism, and when he was up against the five-member syllogism in the original work, he solved the difficulty in a crude manner and annexed to the chapter a discussion of fallacies based on the three-member syllogism. This conclusion gains in force from a study of the other systems of philosophy, like the Sāṅkhya, which are reflected in the *Maṇimēkalai* in their earlier phases.¹²⁰ 5. *Maṇi*, Padigam, ll. 10-2.