is not to determine a conclusive list of major Hindu theologians and theological
works, but rather to illustrate the nature of the judgments necessarily involved,
by attention to some Nya ̄ya, Veda ̄nta, and Mı ̄ma ̄m.sa ̄ texts, and a few other
instances of Hindu intellectual discourse. I assume from the start that our
attention is focused only on plausible candidates for the title, and thus omit con-
sideration of the wider range of intellectual production in the sciences and lit-
erary fields. I also exclude works which may be theology, but not Hindu theology,
e.g., the entire corpus of Buddhist and Jaina writings in traditional India. Finally,
I limit my consideration to premodern works, though one could easily extend
the analysis to the theological credentials of more recent authors, ranging from
Ram Mohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen to Sri Aurobindo and Ramana
Maharshi, and to contemporary Hindu scholars writing both inside and outside
of India.
Let us begin with Nya ̄ya. The early commentators on the Nya ̄ya Su ̄trasand
authors like Jayanta Bhat.t.a (ninth century) who wrote more systematic trea-
tises developed increasingly sophisticated treatments of God’s existence and the
divine nature. Theological reflection – about God, using religious sources of
knowledge – came to the fore in the midst of a broader concern for proper logic,
rhetoric, epistemology, and ontology. Much in the commentarial texts and
in Jayanta’s Nya ̄yamañjarı ̄ is not solely or primarily theological, and could
just as well be located in some other disciplines. By contrast, Udayana’s
Nya ̄yakusuma ̄ñjaliis a substantive theological work entirely devoted to the topic
of God’s existence. Building on earlier resources in the Nya ̄ya tradition, it brings
great originality to its consideration of the question of God, and argues its claims
about God within a broad framework capable of convening a conversation across
numerous religious boundaries.
But some Nya ̄ya treatments of God move from the realm of intentional
theology to that of a more rarified logical analysis which simply retains older
and more theological elements. Although “God” is considered in a way that
may be theologically useful in such works, they need not be thought of as the-
ological. For example, I suggest that the I ̄s ́varava ̄da(Discourse on God) section of
Gan.ges ́a’s Tattvacinta ̄man.i(thirteenth century) takes up the topic of God as an
intellectually interesting one, but not as a living theological concern. Gan.ges ́a
explores the arguments about God’s existence in great detail, yet only within
an exhaustive treatment of a wider range of epistemological concerns.^33
TheI ̄s ́varava ̄dais only the twenty-first part of the second book, itself devoted
to an analysis of inference. The consideration of God is preceded by sections on
the construction of a good inference, fallacies, and generalization. It is followed
by sections on causal efficacy and liberation. The third book then turns to the
topic of comparison (upama ̄na). “God” is one more topic to be sorted out and
understood properly, one component within a much larger philosophical
work; what had been a standard theological topic is taken up by Gan.ges ́a
primarily for its epistemological value. Gan.ges ́a is a superb logician who can
analyze theological topics with subtlety; but he is not a theologian even when
discussing God.
restoring “hindu theology” as a category 465