A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s5.1

c33.s5.1

We may fairly find the impulse to logic² as given by the investigation of the Mīmāṅsā school; the term Nyāya suggests this conclusion, and it is entirely in accord with common sense, though of course it was a distinct act to advance to what may fairly be deemed logical science. Of the antiquity of logic we have no real knowledge; efforts to find it early in Buddhism are ruined by the lateness of Buddhist texts, and the attempts to ascribe the beginnings of the *Nyāya Sūtra*³ to a Gotama (*c.* 500 B. C.), while the true Nyāya is ascribed to Akṣapāda (*c.* A. D. 150) rest on no adequate ground. Nor can we reach any result by the argument⁴ that the commentator Vātsyāyana preceded the *Māṭhara Vṛtti* on the *Sāṁkhyakārikā*, and it the *Anuyogadvārasūtra* of the Jains, for, apart from the fact that the Jain Sūtra is only as it stands authority for the fifth century at best, the *Māṭhara Vṛtti*, as we have it, is not an early text.¹ All that we really know is that the *Nyāya Sūtra* as it stands, a compilation no doubt representing earlier thought, takes cognizance of the nihilistic school of Buddhism, probably as it developed in the first century A. D. And even that result is uncertain. The *Vaiçeṣika Sūtra* is likewise of wholly uncertain date, though probably more or less contemporaneous with the *Nyāya*. If the *Nyāya* essentially gives us a logic, the *Vaiçeṣika* represents a naturalistic view which finds in atoms the basis of the material world, but both Sūtras accept in some measure the view of the other. Kaṇāda, the alleged author of the *Vaiçeṣika Sūtra*, is a mere nickname, and the Sūtra shows much unevenness of composition. The rise of the Vaiçeṣika has been ascribed to the second century B. C. on the score that it is attacked by Açvaghoṣa, and that it agrees in many points with the Jain philosophical views; thus it believes in the real activity of the soul, denied by the Vedānta of Çaṅkara, holds the effect to be different from the cause, the qualities from the substance, and accepts atoms. But this is quite inconclusive, and we cannot say even that the Vaiçeṣika ever was materialistic in the Lokāyata sense of deriving the soul from matter. The question of the original view of the two Sūtras as to God is disputed, but at least both say very little on the topic, and that little may be due to working over at the time when they had become definitely theistic schools.