Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s7.t2.54

v1.c7.s7.t2.54

Old Buddhist *Hetuvidya* and *Nyaya* all have some aspects that are not complete or rigorous. For instance, “five-part” syllogism obviously has repetitions and after removing the first two or the latter two, the remaining three parts still can accomplish the inference. Old *Hetuvidya* in the main is a kind of analogous or inductive inference and a conclusion from such inference sometimes is not necessarily correct. Moreover, in spite of considerable studies on “hetu”, old Hetuvidya still lacks adequate exploration as to how to decide a “hetu” is right or not and so, its theories of logics are not rigorous. Besides, its “occasions for rebuke” include contradictory or fallacious contents as well as contents that violate specific rules of dispute and some of contents are not within the strict scope of logic reasoning. These defects arose mainly because old Hetuvidya or the Nyaya proposed their theories in the process of debate and these theories are for the need of argumentation rather than for pure logic reasoning.