Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s2.1

c26.s2.1

The date of the great Buddhist logician Dignāga is still uncertain, though there are grounds on which he may be assigned to not later than A.D. 400, and in any event a much later date is out of the question. His services to logic are difficult to estimate precisely, because a vital question is involved of his relative priority or posteriority to the Vaiçeṣika authority, Praçastapāda, in whom appear very important changes in the logical doctrines hitherto professed in the Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika schools. Reasons for the probable priority of Dignāga have been advanced elsewhere;² the suggestion that these innovations of Praçastapāda are in fact to be found in Kaṇāda is clearly erroneous;³ the logic of Kaṇāda is unquestionably primitive, and would have been very different had it been inspired by the much more mature ideas which appear quite openly in Praçastapāda. There remains, however, the possibility of derivation of both advances in Buddhism and in the Nyāya-Vaiçeṣika from a school not yet known to us.