The Khandanakhandakhadya of Sri Harsha, Volume I

The book Khandanakhandakhadya composed by Shri Harsha-who wrote probably before the eight century-is the most famous and important treatise of the Vedanta. As its name implies, destructive criticism, of the most thorough going kind. The thesis upon which the entire work is based is that nothing can be explained-neither any factor or worldly phenomena nor the ultra-phenomenal consciousness or Brahman. All is inexplicable anirvachniyam; no adequate explanation can be provided of anything. In fact so thorough going is the ‘inexplicability’ propounded that our author is denying the reality of Word also as a means of cognition; and yet, it is upon Vedic texts that he bases his notion of non-duality. The author has adopted, is to submit the definitions which the Logicians gives of the main categories and main cognitional activities, to a critical investigation, which leads to the results that all those definitions are found to suffer from inner contradictions and hence untenable. The ‘arguments of refutation’ begin with the refutation of the Logicians explanation of the Right Cognition. Every one of the definitions proposed by several writers on Nyaya is taken up, examined and found defective. Similar refutations follow of-Apprehension, Recognition, Remembrance, the several kinds of Negation Instrument in general and Instrument of Cognition in particular, Operation in general, Perception, Non-apprehension as a means of cognition and the different Fallacies of inference. With this ends the first chapter, Chapter II contains similar refutations of some of the more ‘Clinchers’ postulated by the Naiyayika. Chapter III shows the absurdity involved in the putting of any such questions-What is the proof of the existence of God? Chapter IV continues the refutation of the Nyaya categories of Existence, Non-Existence, Qualification, Substance, Quality, Community, Eternality, Individuality, Relations, Substratum, the conceptions of ‘above’ and ‘below’, there relations of Subject and Object, Differences, the notion of Causality, Destruction and Prior Negation, Doubt, the notion of contradiction between ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ and Hypothetical Reasoning. This the only English translation of this work.