Post-Samkara Dialectics of The Advaita Vedanta

by A. Bhattacharyya Shastri

An attempt has been made to give a systematic presentation of post-Samkara dialectics of the Advaita-Vedanta. The main object of the dialectics as developed by the Neo-Vedantic teachers is to carry though to perfection by a critical examination of the concepts and categories of the opposing sister schools.

The present volume comprises eight chapters bearing mainly on the epistemology of post-Samkara thought. The first three chapters deal with the nature and validity of knowledge and the next five are concerned mainly with an explanation of appearance and its implication from the standpoint of epistemology.

In the first chapter, nature of knowledge has been examined and analyzed so as to bring out the problems involved therein.

The second chapter deals with the important and unique Indian conception of self-luminosity of knowledge - the problem of self-luminosity being studied from two sides.

The third chapter is concerned with the validity of knowledge, and deals mainly with the formidable arguments of the Navya-Nyaya school as represented by Gangesa in his Tattva-cintamani and discusses how the Mimamsa and Vedanta schools refute the neo-logicians by their own dialectic.

In the fourth chapter, Srihara's famous dialectic in the refutation of the Nyaya-Vaisesika categories has been studded while the fifth and sixth chapters deal with Madhusudana's refutation of Vyasaraja's arguments against the Vedantic conception of the universe as unreal.