History of Indian Logic

by Satis Chandra Vidyabhushan

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The author has in this work clearly marked the principal stages of Indian logic in the vast period of about two thousand years beginning from 640 and has traced how from Anviksiki the science of debate Indian logic developed into the science of knowledge Pramanasastra and then into the science of dialectics Prakarana of Tarkasastra.T

he treatment of the subject is both historical and critical. The author has traced some Greek influence on indian logic. For instance he has shown how the five membered syllogism of Aristotle found its way through Alexandria Syria and other countries into Taxila and got amalgamated with the Nyaya doctrine of inference. The book is one of the pioneer works on the subjects. It has drawn on original sources exhaustively. Besides the preface introduction, foreword and table of contents the work contains several appendices and indexes.

In this book the author Bimal K. Matilal has chosen deliberately a very dominant trend of the classical philosophical literature as his subject of study. The age of the material used here demands both philological scholarship and philosophical amplification. Classical premanasastras usually deal with the theory of knowledge the nature of inference and language and the related questions of ontology and semantics. Several important concepts and theories have been singled out for critical analysis and clarification in modern terms so that the results may be intelligible to modern students of both sanskrit and philosophy.

This book of Gotama contains the Nyaya system of philosophy and its method which like that of the Vaisesikas consists in the enumeration definition and examination of the categories. It has enjoyed a great popularity as is evident from the numerous commentaries that have from time to time centred round it.