Jewel of Reflection on the Truth (Tattvacintamani)

Introduction

Gangesha, who lived in Mithila in northern Bihar, probably in the fourteenth century, wrote the work in four books on perception, inference, comparison and testimony. Rather than commenting on the old Nyaya Sutra, he discusses each topic through precise definitions, their counter-examples and their improvement. The book on inference became the most commented-on part, above all its analysis of “pervasion” (vyapti), the invariable connection between reason and conclusion, as between smoke and fire. Commentaries by Raghunatha Shiromani and others in Navadvip in Bengal made Navya-Nyaya (“New Reasoning”) the standard technical language of Sanskrit scholarship. In the twentieth century, scholars such as Bimal Krishna Matilal studied it with the tools of modern logic.

Connections

Builds on

• Nyayakusumanjalic. 1000 · Udayana

Taken up in

• Perception1986 · Bimal Krishna Matilal