Musashi Tachikawa

Udayana and His Works

Udayana’sLakṣaṇāvalī contains the well-known verse declaring that he composed the work in a year corresponding to A.D. 984.1 But the verse in question occurs only in one manuscript, and a series of objections have been raised against this date.2 Dineshcandra Bhattacharya has confirmed “by a large volume of evidence” that Udayana was born about A.D. 1025 and that the period of his activities covered the latter half of the eleventh century.3

The Structure Of The World — Introduction to a Translation of the Lakṣaṇāvalī

TheLakṣaṇāvalī(LV) may be considered to be a list of the definitions of the categories(padārtha) 1 and their subdivisions in the Vaiśeṣika philosophy. In this work Udayana first divides the objects of cognition into things that exist (bhāva) and absence(abhāva). He further divides the former into six categories: substance, quality, action, universal, distinction, and inherence. Finally he subdivides each category into nine substances, twenty-four qualities, five actions, two universals, and four absences. These categories and their subdivisions are the unchangeable units of which the world is composed.

Background History and Methodology

The history of Indian logic may be divided into three periods: Old Logic, Buddhist Logic, and New Logic.1 The origins of formal logic in India may go back to the fourth century B.C., but the oldest systematic writing of the major school of Indian logic, the Nyāyasūtra, seems to have been composed at some time between the time of Christ and A.D. 200.2 The dates of important Mahāyāna texts, such as the Prajnāpāramitāsutra, the Saddharmapuṇḍarikasutra, and the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra, seem to fall between 50 B.C. and A.D. 200. Thus Mahāyāna Buddhism arose at the time when the Old Logic was taking its systematic form. Buddhist Logic was established by Dignaga (A.D. 480–540).3 It is to be noted that the first and the second periods of Indian logic were characterized by intense conflict between Buddhist logicians and orthodox Hindu logicians.

Introduction: Basic Concepts

Many Indian philosophers, among them the Hindu and Buddhist logicians, held the world to be a complex of a number of factors. The complex appeared to them to be a closed unit which possessed a certain structure. Indian philosophers made a great conscious effort in their attempt to describe the structure of the world. A large portion of each Indian philosophical system is occupied by a structural description of the world. Attitudes towards this structural description, however, differ according to schools. The difference in the method of description is fundamentally significant for the history of Indian philosophy.

Differentiation Of Categories

In Chapter IV we saw that categories, which are classified in terms of the concepts of ‘samaveta’ and ‘samavetavat’ are related to each other by inherence (samavāya) Here we shall examine the concept of inherence discussed in basic Vaiśeṣika works, such as VS, PBh, and KV