Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s2.10

c26.s2.10

To Dignāga further belongs the credit of establishing the distinction between the actual process of reasoning for the ascertainment of truth and the reasoning for another, which takes the form of communication by the syllogism of three members.¹ He based this distinction on the rejection of the authority of the teacher's utterance as such (çabda).² If we are asked to accept authority, we ask: Is the person who uttered the saying credible, or is the fact itself credible? If the former, then our belief in his sayings is inference from his credibility; if the fact is credible then it is a case of perception. The only value, therefore, to be assigned to syllogism is indirect; the word has value, therefore, only as a conclusion or consequence of the fact; real fact gives a true conclusion. Thus the sources of knowledge are reduced to two, perception and inference. Comparison, a separate source of knowledge in the Nyāya theory, he also rejected; when we recognize a thing by similarity to something else, the operation is essentially perception.