A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.18

c9.18

∗ Kāmandaka expresses the last idea in the following way. "Philosophy, the triple Veda and Vārttā are called the manifest sciences, but if Daṇḍanīti were to be disturbed they would be evil, even if they could exist" (Ibid III 8). A word may be added here as to the meaning of the term ānvīkṣikī which is grammatically more regular than Kauṭilya's ānvīkṣakī. Kauṭilya defines the term to consist of Sāṁkhya, Yoga, and Materialism (Lokâyata). Later writers, however, use it in a more restricted sense. Vātsyāyana (commentary on Gautama's Nyāyasūtras (I 1, 1) takes ānvīkṣikī and nyāyavidyā or nyāyaśāstra to be synonymous terms. Medhātithi and Sarvajñanārāyaṇa commenting on Manusaṁhitā VII 43 interprets the expression 'ānvīkṣikīm chātmavidyām' as the science of dialectics which gives self-knowledge (cf. S. B. E.. Vol. XXV, Introduction, p. xxxvii). Kāmandaka (III 11) renders ānvīkṣikī as 'ātmavidyā' which means, according to the commentator, the science of the nature of categories, *i.e.* the science of dialectics. The author of the Śukranīti declares (I 153) ānvīkṣikī to involve the science of Logic like the Vedānta and the rest. It has been justly remarked by a recent writer that Kauṭilya's description of the characteristics of ānvīkṣakī better suits the nyāya philosophy than the Sāṁkhya and the Yoga as we have them (vide Ramaprasad Chanda, op. cit., p. 229).