The arguments against the existence of Īśvara that are advanced by Śālikanātha’s Prakaraṇapañcikā are quite peculiar and cryptic, due to both the idiosyncratic nature and opaque style of Śālikanātha’s writing. This has contributed to the difficulty in identifying the actual nature of the views that Śālikanātha opposes. This article analyses the framework by which Śālikanātha interrogates the concept of Īśvara and discusses the possible sources of his arguments. It shows, contrary to the conclusions of past scholarship, that considerations of both (...) Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika sources are certainly apparent in Śālikanātha’s formulation of his critique of Īśvara. This paper also discusses the possible sources from which Śālikanātha derives the notion of Īśvara as the creator of the Vedas. It concludes that rather than any Nyāya or Vaiśeṣika sources, it is most likely that Śālikanātha derives this notion of Īśvara from Kumārila, who potentially has Yoga opponent in mind. (shrink)

This essay seeks to characterize one of the leading ideas in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī, the fundamental role that the idea of complexity plays in its theory of knowledge. The appeal to the causally complex nature of any event of valid awareness is framed as a repudiation of the lean ontology and epistemology of the Buddhist theorists working in the tradition of Dharmakīrti; for Jayanta, this theoretical minimalism led inevitably to the inadmissible claim of the irreality of the world outside of (...) consciousness. In countering this Buddhist position, Jayanta adopts some of his opponents’ characteristic terminology, most notably in his use of sāmagrī, “causal complex” itself. He resituates this borrowed vocabulary within a strong appeal to the theory of the kārakas or the semantic roles detailed by grammarians since the time of Pāṇini. Possibly borrowing this sāmagrī-kāraka amalgam from the Buddhist grammarian-epistemologist Jinendrabuddhi, Jayanta uses it as a point of departure for a sustained attack on the views of Dharmottara, who Jayanta understood as offering the most advanced and most problematic Buddhist philosophical position available in his time and place. (shrink)