Philosophy of Charaka-samhita

by Asokan. G | 2008 | 88,742 words

Ayurveda, represented by Charaka and Sushruta, stands first among the sciences of Indian intellectual tradition. The Charaka-samhita, ascribed to the great celebrity Charaka, has got three strata. (1) The first stratum is the original work composed by Agnivesha, the foremost of the six disciples of Punarvasu Atreya. He accomplished the work by coll...

Dialectical terms (27): Violating the proposition (pratijñāhāni)

When one is forced to forsake his preposition due to the attack of the opponent, it is called violating the proposition.[1] For instance, when one begins with his assertion that the self is eternal, but being contradicted by the opponent by a counter thesis that the self is ephemeral, he is forced to give up his original proposition that the self is eternal.

A quite different definition of pratijñāhāni is given by Akṣapāda who considers it as a division of the point of defeat. Accordingly, violating the proposition occurs when one admits in his example that there is the character of a counter example.[2] A person says that sound is ephemeral because it is perceptible by a sense capacity like a jar and the opponent refutes it by saying that sound is eternal because it is perceptible by a sense organ like a genus which is eternal. Then the disputant replies that if a perceptible genus is eternal, a jar also must be eternal. Here the disputant admits that in his example jar, there is the character of eternity which is a property of genus, the counter example. Thus, he denies the ephemeral nature of a jar proposed by him and admits its eternity which is the character of a counter example and hurts the disputant's proposition.[3] Even though the definition given by Caraka is different from the definition given in Nyāya-sūtra, he agrees with the core point that the disputant has to forsake his original thesis. As such, it can be treated as a point of defeat.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

pratijñāhānirnāma sā pūrvaparigṛhītāṃ pratijñāṃ paryanuyukto yathā parityajati, CS,Vimāna - sthāna, VIII. 61.

[2]:

pratidṛṣṭāntadharmābhyanujñā svadṛṣṭānte pratijñāhāniḥ. Nyāyasūtra., V. ii. 2.

[3]:

see Vātsyāyana on ibid, Nyāya-Bhāṣya of Vātsyāyana., p. 448-49.

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