The present work was submitted as a thesis for the D. Liuz. degree of the Calcutta University and wat unanimously approved by the Board of Adjudicators in 1949.
One of the chief incentives for embarking upon this arduous work was to place materials at the hands of the scholars of the European and American universities, which would enable them to make an unbiased appraisal of the flight of logical speculations recorded by Indian philosophers. I thought that my cherished desire was bound to remain unrealized if the volume was not speedily published.
So with this object always in view, I first approached the authorities of the University of Calcutta and then the Education Department of the Government of West Bengal, but only to reap the result of my fruitless endeavours.
I sent my work to the press even at the risk of being involved in financial difficulties, and I am glad to see that this humble work has seen the light of the day. Before I finish, I must express my sense of profound gratitude to Prof. Anukul Chandra Mookerjee of the Allahabad University for the unstinted appreciation and encouragement which he ungrudgingly extended twords me. My heartiest thanks are due to Prof. Jatilcoomar Mookerjee, who, young in age but aged in scholarslup, has rendered invaluable assistance in numerous ways. A cold-blooded logician as he is, he has compelled me to revise my original writing in many places by his unsparing and devastating criticism.
It is a matter of profound regret to me that Sri Ksitindranath Banerjee B.A., LL.B., and his son Sri Visvanath Banerjee are no longer in the land of the living to see the result of my researches. Lastly I must express my sense of irredeemable debts which I owe to Maharaja Bhupendrachandra Sinha B.A. of Susang, to Sri Binayaknath Banerjee M.A., LL. B., Advocate, Calcutta High Court, and to Dr. Jyotirmoya Banerjee M.B., D.P.H., D.T.M.
In the course of my study of Jaina Nyaya I found that the Jainas have accorded a position of supreme importance to tarka as an instrument of inductive knowledge. Its criticism of the Nyaya conception of tarka stimulated my curiosity to study the Nyaya literature on the subject. I found that the fund of speculations in Nyaya far exceeded in extent and in quality the speculations of the Jainas. The wealth of materials proved too strong a temptation for me and 1 thought that if I could give a critical representation of the thoughts of the philosophers, whose activities were spread out over several centuries, it might be regarded as an humble contribution to the present stock of knowledge. The difficulty of language and the abstruseness of the arguments in the original texts are real hurdles in the way of a research scholar on Indian philosophy. But the survey of the contour and also of the fundamental topics of Indian philosophy has been completed by the works of Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and of the late Professor S. N. Dasgupta, whose achievements will remain immortal in the annals of the cultural history of India in recent times. The immortal work of the late Mahamahopadhyaya Dr S. C. Vidya-bhusana and the illuminating articles and papers of Mahamahopadhyaya Dr Gopinath Kaviraj, M.A., D. Litt., have also served to narrow down the scope of future workers on Indian philosophy. What now remains is the study of individual problems. I adopted for my researches the problem of tarka, inductive reasoning, which I have rendered for the sake of brevity simply as reasoning. The difficulties of the original presentation in Sanskrit are too familiar to require to be stressed. I have perhaps set myself a difficult task-perhaps too difficult for my equipment. But the faith sustains me that scholars would make handsome allowance for the difficulties and obscurities of the materials and they would encourage me if 1 succeed in throwing spots of light on a tangled problem, which is hardly studied in the original even by the orthodox students of tools. I am perhaps guilty of imprudence for choosing a subject which is enormously stiff and whose promise of success is problematic. I was rather drawn into it and I must be excused if I have been enterprising, which is the privilege of youth. The present dissertation represents the strenuous labour of full.
six years involved in the study of the writings of the philosophers of various schools. I now present the results of my study of reasoning in all its aspects, which must be admitted to have tremendous logical and epistemological value. The importance of the subject of my research may be gathered from the fact that Vardhamana has accorded almost co-equal status to reasoning and inference, as the dual organ of the proof of God's existence. Udayana has compared these two to the feet of God. The aptness of the imagery is derived from the fact that reasoning and inference together constitute the evidence of Divine Reality. I have made my study as comprehensive and as intensive as lay in my power. The present dissertation starts from the Nyayasutra and comes down to the latest exponents of the school of neo-logicians, and embraces a comprehensive treatment Vaisesika, Madıva and Jaina schools of thought.
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