Jaina Epistemology in Historical and Comparative Perspective.

• Author: Patil, Parimal G.
• Position: Book review

Jaina Epistemology in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Critical Edition and English Translation of Logical-Epistemological Treatises: Nyayavatara, Nyayavatara-vivrti and Nyayavataratippana with Introduction and Notes. By PIOTR BALCEROWICZ. Alt-und Neu-Indische Studien, vol. 53,1-2. Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 2001. Pp. xli + 536.

This two-volume work in an extensively annotated translation (vol. 1) and critical edition (vol. 2) of Siddhasena Mahamati's Nyayavatara (seventh-eighth centuries C.E.) and Siddharsigani's extensive commentary, the Nyayavatara-vivrti (tenth century C.E.). A partial edition and translation of Devabhadrasuri's (twelfth century C.E.) Nyayavataratipanna, a subcommentary on the Nyayavataravivrti, is also included in the notes to the corresponding sections of the translation.

According to Balcerowicz, the Nyayavatara is "an innovative or prototypical work" (p. i) in Jaina religious thought, since it is one of the "first serious Jaina works on epistemology ... and endeavors to establish a Jaina tradition of its own" (p. xxxvi). The text is also of broader significance: it marks, he says, "an important advance in the history of Indian logic" (p. xxxvii), since in verse 20, for example, Siddhasena Mahamati reduces inferential arguments to two steps (in contrast to the more familiar three-and five-step versions) by doing away with the need to cite an example. According to Balcerowicz, Siddhasena does so "first, to eliminate all unnecessary elements of formal reasoning and, secondly, to emancipate formal reasoning from their empirical relativity and from the need of empirical instantiation" (p. xxxvii, n. lxxxiii). Balcerowicz also claims that Siddharsigani's Nyayavatara-vivrti is "responsible for the subsequent development of Jaina epistemological thought to a much larger degree than it has so far been recognized," since it is "widely quoted" in Mallisena's Syadvadamanjari, and Hemacandra's Pramanamimamsa "could even hardly be conceived" without it (p. xxxix). In contrast, Balcerowicz finds Devabhadrasuri's (twelfth century C.E.) Nyayavatara-tippana to be of "secondary philosophic value" and considered it "unproductive to edit the whole text, since Devabhadra's glosses hardly add anything new to the text of the Vivrti" (p. xxxix).

In the introduction to his translation (vol. 1, pp. i-xli), Balcerowicz focuses on establishing the relative chronology of the Nyayavatara. He concludes that the text should be dated...