are in the realm of post-sensory inference, and they are all universals. As in
much traditional Buddhist doctrine, universals do not really exist; they are
merely mental, illusory products of consciousness whose overcoming, like all
illusions of permanences over and above momentary aggregates, constitutes
enlightenment.
Dignaga’s most famous theory is that names are negative. A ‘cow’ is merely
a ‘not–non-cow’. This might seem to beg the question, as some meaning of
‘cow’ is already assumed in the definition. But Dignaga stresses that any name
whatsoever is a universal; it refers to all possible appearances of this thing (this
is true even in the case of proper names, since their objects are a series of
appearances in the flux of experience). To refer to something as ‘white’, one
cannot show that one knows all possible instances of ‘white’; all one can do
is to demarcate this particular experience from ‘non-white’ (Stcherbatsky,
1962: 1:459–460). Pure sensation is all that exists, and that is always particu-
lar, and wordless. Verbal thought makes it definite by negation, differentiating
concepts vis-à-vis one another.^44 Negation is the defining characteristic of
thought; and since negation itself is not to be reified, thought is ultimately an
illusion. It is valid only on the plane of ordinary human experience in samsara.
On the higher plane, reached in the illumination of meditation, one perceives
things as they really are, a world of evanescent particulars.^45
Dignaga disposes of the Vaisheshika reified ontology, and of Hindu theories
of language, both the Mimamsa with its verbal reports and eternal sounds,
and Bhartrihari’s primacy of the verbal sentence. Dignaga’s philosophy emerges
in dialectical opposition to these positions, but it also continues and builds
on a main premise accepted throughout the Hindu schools of the time: the
reality of sensory perception and the building of mental inference upon it.
Dignaga radicalizes these concepts by interpreting them through the traditional
Buddhist doctrines of momentariness and nominalism, upheld in his day by
the Sautrantika school. The response of the Nyayas is equally dialectical.
Nyaya-Vaisheshika seems to have become a united front at this time; under
common attack by the Buddhists, Naiyayikas led by Uddyotakara (ca. 550–
600) put forward a common defense. Their response to the Buddhist negativity
and illusoriness of concepts was to become even more realist. The Buddhists,
constructing the mundane world out of negation, denied that negation is a
reality; the Naiyayikas added non-existence as a seventh category to the tra-
ditional Vaisheshika six (Stcherbatsky, 1962: 25, 1:48–49). The Naiyayikas
multiplied the number of entities which they regarded as real: relations are
real; relations among relations are real as well. These issues became the puzzle
contents which would link Buddhist and Hindu philosophers for several cen-
turies. The Naiyayikas urged that existence itself must exist; the Buddhists
denied it, holding that existence is inexpressible reality itself.232 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths