Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s3.4

c26.s3.4

Inference for the sake of another, or syllogism, is defined as the verbal declaration of the middle term—that is, when the reason is set out in words in order to produce a conviction in others.³ Inference is properly a form of knowledge, and words are, therefore, only inference in a secondary sense, namely, as producing knowledge, the name of the cause being derived from the effect. Such a form of inference is two-fold, either direct or homogeneous (*sādharmyavat*) or indirect or heterogeneous (*vaidharmyavat*): either ‘Sound is non-eternal, because it is a product; all products are non-eternal, like a pot’, or ‘Sound is non-eternal, because it is a product; no non-eternal thing is a product, like ether’. This, however, is a needlessly full form of the syllogism; Dharmakīrti is content with the simple form ‘The hill is fiery, because it is smoky’, the express formulation of the general proposition being unnecessary, since it is contained in the reason ‘because it is smoky’. The omission of the example he defends¹ against Dignāga by insisting that the term ‘smoke’ includes the case cited in the example and also the negative example; but he concedes that it has the value of giving particularity to what is pointed out in a general way by the middle term; the complete enunciation of the reasoning with the concrete example is more effective.