Nyayakusumanjali of Udayana (study)

by Sri Ramen Bhadra | 2014 | 37,777 words

This page relates ‘Verbal Testimony as a pramana’ of the study on the Nyayakusumanjali of Udayana, who belonged to the Nyaya-Vaisheshika School of Indian philosophy and lived in the 10th century. The Nyaya-Kusumanjali is primarily concerned with proving the existence of God but also deals with various other important philosophical problems. The book is presented as an encyclopedia of Nyaya-Vaisesika doctrines.

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Verbal Testimony as a pramāṇa

Verbal testimony (śabda) also is a source of knowledge which is admitted by Nyāya, but included in inference by the Vaiśeṣika. So it is easy for Vaśeṣika to say that testimony cannot disprove God because it has already been shown that inference cannot contradict God. In this context Udayana refutes the Vaiśeṣika and establishes that verbal testimony has to be admitted as a separate pramāṇa. In the case of testimony, we understand a whole meaning consisting of the meanings denoted by individual words. When there are expectancy, compatibility and proximity among the different words in a sentence, the meanings can be related with one another and a whole meaning becomes understood. Thus a general rule may be made that whenever meanings are expressed by words which have expectancy etc, there is the cognition of whole meaning. So such meaning can be known by inference. Hence it is not necessary to admit a separate pramāṇa. Udayana says that such an inference will not be valid. Only such words as are uttered by a reliable person free from all defects can produce valid verbal knowledge. Moreover, inference cannot definitely establish a relation between a word and a meaning. For example, when one utters the sentence “a person is sprinkling with payas”, a relation should be established between both water and milk, because payas means any of them. But the speaker only intends that the relation should be with water and not milk. It may be said that there will be no difficulty if we take into consideration that a particular meaning is determined by expectancy. To this Udayana answers that expectancy becomes a cause only by its presence, it is not necessary to have a cognition of it. But in an inference the ground must be an object of knowledge and it cannot produce an inference simply by its presence.[1]

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