Nyayakusumanjali of Udayanacarya (Volume 1)

Nyayakusumanjali, one of the most important author-works of the Nyaya philosophy is composed by Udayanacarya, the great ancient Indian thinker, commentator, author and a master-stylist in recondite Sanskrit prose. This work is one of the two major magna opera of Udayanacarya, the other being Amatattvaviveka, which is wholly devoted to a thorough criticism of all the basic doctrines of Buddhism. Unlike Amatattvaviveka, Nyayakusumanjali is primarily concerned with the exposition and argumentative defence of the Nyaya doctrines-especially those relating to its methodology-against the corresponding but opposed doctrines of Mimamsa and Vaisesika. A unique feature of this work is that it brings forward a large number of inferential proofs to establish the reality of God, which is almost a totally-neglected topic in all the earlier basic works on Nyaya. Even the aphorisms of Gotama, supposed to be the primary source of Nyaya philosophy, make only a passing and oblique reference to God in a single aphorism. Udayanacarya is perhaps the first great Naiyayika of ancient India who introduced theism in a big way both in the Nyaya and the Vaisesika Schools of Indian philosophy. In the first volume of Nyayakusumanjali, passage by passage, while in the second volume, he has presented an analytical-critical survey of the contents of the whole work.