Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/296

This page needs to be proofread.

280 The Nyiiya- Vaifeika Philosophy [ CII. edition ofVaiseika that the Vaiseika siUras were earlier than the N yaya. It seems to me to be perfectly certain that the V aiseikll siUras were written before Caraka (80 A.D.); for he not only quotes one of the Vazeika siUras, but the whole foundation of his medical physics is based on the Vaiseika physics l . The Lmikavatiira szt/ra (which as it was quoted. by Asvaghoa is earlier than 80 A.D.) also makes allusions to the atomic doctrine. There are other weightier grounds, as we shall see later on, for supposing that the Vaze#ka sittras are probably pre-Buddhistic 2 . I t is certain that even the logical part of the present Nyaya siUras was preceded by previous speculations on the subject by thinkers of other schools. Thus in commenting on I. i. 32 in which the slitra states that a syllogism consists of five premisses(avayava} Vatsyayana says that this slitra was written to refute the views of those who held that there should be ten premisses 3 . The Vazse#ka sfttras also give us some of the earliest types of inference, which do not show any acquaintance with the technic of the Nyaya doctrine of inference 4 . Does Vaiseika represent an Old School of Mimarpsa? The Vaiseika is so much associated with Nyaya by tradition that it seems at first sight quite unlikely that it could be supposed to represent an old school ofMlmarpsa, older than that represented in the .ill/mal!ZSa siitras. But a closer inspection of the Vaise#ka siitras seems to confirm such a supposition in a very remarkable way. We have seen in the previous section that Caraka quotes a Vaiseika siUra. An examination of Caraka's Szt/rasthalla (1. 35-38) leaves us convinced that the writer of the verses had some compendium of Vaiseika such as that of the Bha'apariccheda before him. Caraka siUra or kiiriktl (I. i. 36) says that the gU1)as are those which have been enumerated such as heaviness, etc., cognition, and those which begin with the gU1)a "para" (univer- sality) and end with "prayatlla" (effort) together with the sense- qualities (sartha). It seems that this is a reference to some well- known enumeration. But this enumeration is not to be found in the Vaieika slltra (1. i. 6) which leaves out the six gU1)as, 1 Caraka, Siirira, 39, 2 See the next section. 3 Vatsyayana's Bhaya on the Nyiiya siitras, I. i. 32. This is undoubtedly a reference to the Jaina view as fOllnd in Da.favaikii/ikalliryukti as noted before. 4 Nyii)'a S1ltra I. i. 5, and Vaile!ika SlUms IX. ii. 1-2,4-5, and III. i. 8-17.