pleasure, pain, happiness, sorrow,
and so forth—to the Self. The philo-
sophical difficulties with inherence—
particularly the notion that it is one
single principle and not a collection of
things—caused the Nyaya school great
difficulty. These assumptions were ulti-
mately responsible for the rise of
Navyanyayaschool, which attempted
to explain these relationships in a
more sophisticated way. For further
information see Karl H. Potter and
Sibajiban Bhattacharyya (eds.), Indian
Philosophical Analysis, 1992; and
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles
A. Moore (eds.), A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy,1957.
Nyaya Sutras
Foundational text for the Nyayaschool,
one of the six schools of traditional
Hindu philosophy. The Nyaya Sutras
are traditionally attributed to the
philosopher Gautama; the most signifi-
cant commentary was written by
Vatsyayanain the fourth century. The
Nyaya Sutras begin with an exposition
of the cause of the human bondage,
explained as stemming from a five-part
causal chain: pain, birth, activity,
defect, and wrong notion. Each of
these elements is caused by the one
succeeding it, and is eliminated with
the destruction of its cause. The root
cause for bondage and reincarnation
(samsara) is thus wrong notions,
which must be corrected to attain final
liberation of the soul (moksha). In
their quest for correct understanding,
the Nyaya Sutras devote great attention
to the pramanas, the means by which
human beings can gain true and accu-
rate knowledge, and to the rules and
procedures for applying them. The
Nyaya Sutras describe four such pra-
manas: perception (pratyaksha), infer-
ence (anumana), analogy (upamana),
and authoritative testimony (shabda).
These ideas are accepted by virtually all
Indian philosophical schools and are
the Nyayas’ major contribution to
Indian philosophy.
Nyaya Sutras