Bhaṭṭa Jayanta: Comprehension, Knowledge, and the Reduction of Testimony to Inference

The present paper is an analysis of the defense of the epistemological autonomy of verbal testimony (śabda), against its reduction to inference, as found in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī. The article identifies the Vaiśeṣika, Buddhist and Sāṅkhya positions hinted at in the Nyāyamañjarī, and it analyses the reuse by Jayanta of the arguments conceived by the Mīmāṃsā philosopher Kumārila. Unlike for Mīmāṃsakas, according to Jayanta the relation between language and reality is established by convention, but in its day-to-day usage it is clear that an a priori connection is a necessary condition for linguistic communication, so that the distinction between a fixed connection and a conventional one weakens. The analysis of Jayanta leads to two general conclusions: 1. In ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta there is no distinction between non-committal understanding and committal knowledge from words. Consequently, 2. in ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta the language is primarily examined from an epistemological viewpoint, as the conveyer of true statements. There are no “neutral” statements, and false statements are in fact inappropriate uses of language

Bhattamimamsa and Nyaya on Veda and Tradition

pubblicato anche da Firenze University Press, Firenze

Epistemology of Textual Re-use in the Nyāyamañjarī

The epistemology of śabda is one of the main themes in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī, and, in the hypotheses explored in this paper, also the conceptual basis of Jayanta’s textual re-use. The sixth chapter of the Nyāyamañjarī contains a debate between Vaiyākaraṇas and Mīmāṃsakas who, respectively, advocated an holistic or atomistic theory of language. Selected Jayanta’s re-uses from Vyākaraṇa, Mīmāṃsā, and Nyāya sources are here surveyed and analyzed, with a focus on their meaning and on the context. The method of analysis is partially following Moravcsik’s scheme for a classification of citations, as well as Small’s classification by symbolic functions. By re-using texts Jayanta not only imparted authority to his own arguments, but also reassessed the relation of his tradition with other ones. Re-used ideas and words stand for symbols of those authors’ tenets, and those authors represent symbols of their respective traditions. Moreover, by quoting a certain author Jayanta often anointed him with a symbolic status of trustworthy authority, and his statement with a status of śabdapramāṇa