FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Jainadarśaner Digdarśana জৈনদর্শনের দিগ্দর্শন
Satindra Chandra Nyāyāchārya presents an outline of Jaina philosophy in this book. The author argues that Syādvāda and Nayavāda are the two main fundamental theses of Jainism. The book contains a detailed presentation of the Jaina theory of pramāṇa. The author explains why the Jainas accept pratyabhijñā as an indirect pramāṇa. There is also a discussion on the Jaina view that upamāṇa pramāṇa could be included in pratyabhijñā. The author ends his discourse with a discussion on Nayavāda.
Cultural Otherness and Beyond
Cultural Otherness and Beyond is a collection of essays on philosophy of culture. This volume is edited by Chhanda Gupta and D.P.Chattopadhyaya. There are eleven essays in this volume, all dealing with the very idea of culture and nature of understanding a culture. This brings in the idea of exchange among different cultures where the concept of other plays an important role.
Japasutram (Volume-1)
This book, written by Pratyagatmananda Saraswati, is an original work written in Sanskrit and explained in Bengali, containing his views on different aspects of ancient Indian philosophy and religion. In this volume, one finds discussion on the nature of words, the nature of the origin of the creation etc.
The Problems of Philosophy
The present book is an introduction to the main issues dealt with in Western philosophy. This book is divided into eleven chapters: 1. The concept of philosophy, 2. Philosophy, science and religion, 3. The methods of philosophy, 4. The nature of knowledge, 5. The relation of knowledge to object, 6. Objects of knowledge as constructions, 7. Sense-data and the perception of objects, 8. The nature and tests of truth and error, 9. The theory of external relations, 10. The theory of Internal Relations, 11. The nature of universals, and 12. thought and reality.
Darśana Manīṣā Categories
शब्दशक्तिप्रकाशिका (Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā (Vol-2))
In the second volume of Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā, Jagadīśa presents a detailed analysis of Prabhākara’s kāryānvitaśaktivāda and refutes this view. Jagadīśa defends the niravacchinna śaktivāda of the words like ākāśa etc. The view of Raghuntha Siromani with regard to the causal nexus of linguistic understanding has been refuted. Jagadisa offers an analysis of the nature of paribhāṣika śabda and argues that proper names given to individuals do not have śakti and they are to be treated as paribhāśaika śabda. Jagadīśa defends the view that śakti resides in all the three loci: the individual, the universal and the relation of samavāya that holds between an individual and the universal. Jagadīśa also refutes the Mīmāṃsaka view that the sentence has lakṣaṇā and the view of Ālaṃkārika regarding the vyāñjanā relation has been rejected. In this book, Jagadīśa offers a detailed analysis of different kinds of lakṣaṇā and in this context, one comes across a criticism of the Prabhākara thesis that the word having lakṣaṇā is not the cause of syntactic knowledge of the sentence. This book ends with an analysis of the nature of yogaruḍa śabda.
शब्दशक्तिप्रकाशिका (Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā (Vol-3))
The third volume of Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā contains an analysis of samāsa. The book starts with a presentation and analysis of the definition of samāsa in general. Jagadīśa distinguishes nitya samāsa from anitya samāsa. The present work contains an analysis of six kinds of samāsa, viz, 1. Dvigu, 2. Tatpuruṣa, 3. Avyaībhāva, 4. Bahubrīhi, 5. Dvandva. The author accepts another samāsa viz. Upapada. The Grammarians hold that the vigraha vākya and the samasta vākya do not have the same śakti and so the nature of understanding the meaning of the vigraha vākya does not amount to understanding the meaning of the samāsa. Jagadīśa refutes this view of the Grammarian and argues that both the vigraha vākya and the samāsa do possess the same meaning. While the traditional Pāṇinian grammar includes karmadhārāya samāsa in tatpuruṣa samāsa and dvigu samāsa in karmadhāraya samāsa, the Katantra Grammar includes dvigu samāsa in tatpuruṣa samāsa. Jagadīśa intervenes in this debate and holds that karmadhāraya and dvigu are independent samāsas and so he thinks that there are six kinds of samāsas viz. tatpuruṣa, avyaībhāva, bahubrīhi, dvandva, karmadhārāya and dvigu. In this book one finds a detailed analysis of all these six kinds of samāsa. Even if Jagadīśa does not accept upapada samāsa as an independent samāsa, still he offers an analysis of upapada samāsa on behalf of those who accept upapada samāsa.
शब्दशक्तिप्रकाशिका (Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā (Vol-1))
Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā is an important text written by Jagadīśa Tarkālaṃkāra containing an analysis of śabda pramāna following the Navya-Nyāya tradition. This work is a defence of many of the theses of Gaṅgeśa, the author of Tattvacintāmaṇi. In many places, the views of Bhatṛhari and Srīpatidatta, the author of Kalapa-pariśiṣta, have been critically assessed and defended. The author offers a detailed analysis of how the knowledge of the meaning of a sentence is generated through the presence of the elements like ākāṁṣkā, yogyatā and āsatti. Since the meaning of a word is defined in terms of śakti, a question arises with regard to the locus of śakti. Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsakas hold that śakti stays in the universal. Jagadīśa refutes this thesis of the Mīmāṁsakas. The author also refutes the thesis that the locus of śakti is the individual object, a view that is propagated by Raghunātha Śiromaṇi. Jagadīśa defends the view that combines both the insights that the locus of śakti is the individual object and the locus of śakti is the universal. In this book, Jagadīśa presents an analysis of the nature of lakṣanā. In this work we also find an analysis of how ākaṁkṣā, yogyatā and āsatti could be treated as the cause of understanding the meaning of a sentence. Jagadīśa, however, refutes the view that the knowledge of tātparya is the cause of understanding the meaning of a sentence, instead proposes the view that prakaraṇajñāna is the cause of understanding the meaning of a sentence. Thus in the present work the author, after defending śabdapramāṇa as an independent pramāṇa, offers his analysis of the ways of generating linguistic understanding.
प्रामाण्यवाद: (Prāmāṇyavādaḥ)
In this book, Harirama Tarkavagisa critically assesses the Mīmāṃśa theory of self-luminosity of knowledge. According to Prabhākara, the knower, the object of knowledge and the knowledge itself are apprehended in one go. The Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas hold that knowledge is inferred through a property called knownness. Murāri Miśra, another Mīmāṃsaka philosopher, holds that knowledge is known in a subsequent knowledge called introspection. Harirāma, following the footsteps of Gaṅgeśa, argues that since sometimes doubt regarding the validity of knowledge arises in the third moment after the origin of knowledge, the validity of the knowledge is apprehended by something other than the totality of the causal conditions of that knowledge. Harirama further argues that there is something wrong with the thesis that knowledge is self-luminious.
The Padārthatattva-Nirūpaṇam (পদার্থতত্বনিরুপনম)
The present book, written by Raghunātha Śiramaṇi and translated and explained in Bengali by Madhusudan Bhattacharya, is an attempt to present his views on the metaphysical categories generally accepted in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika tradition. Raghunātha, of course, refutes some of the categories accepted by earlier Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy. He even does not hesitate to accept some of the views of the Mīmāṁsā philosophy, thereby going against his own tradition.
जागदीशीव्याधिकरणम् (Jāgadīśvyādhikaraṇam)
This is a prakaraṇa text on the Nyāya theory of vyāpti written by Jagadīśa. The main theme of the work centres around the nature of vyāpti.Knowledge of vyāpti is the cause of inferential knowledge. If the definition of vyāpti is constructed in terms of avyābhicāritatva, then one could explain avyābhicāritatva in five alternative ways. And none of these alternatives is acceptable, for this understanding of vyāpti would fail to account for kevalānvayi inference. In order to remove this problem, the definition of vyāpti is reconstructed as pratiyogivṛttidharmāvacchinna-pratiyogitākabhāvarupa vyādhikaraṇadharmāvacchinnabhāva. Jagadīśa examines this new definition of vyāpti and offers his justification, refuting all the possible objections.
BROWSE BY LANGUAGE
The Fundamentals of Religion
The present book, written by Nalinikanta Brahma, undertakes a detailed study of the essence of all religions. The author classifies all the religions under three groups: 1. Impersonal, 2. Personal and 3. Supra-Personal. The doctrines and beliefs of all the great regions have been presented in terms of this classification. The author makes a critical assessment of the objections to religion as advanced by Russell, Freud and Marx. The author defends what he calls “ Supre-Personal Religion”. The book ends with an analysis of the possibility of a universal religion.
The Philosophy of Word and Meaning
Gaurinath Sastri, the author of this book, reconstructs the whole philosophy of Bhartṛhari. Bhartṛhari is the first philosopher in Indian tradition to build an entire philosophical system on a theory of language. The present book contains the following chapters: 1. The Supreme Reality, 2. The Supreme Power, 3. Functioning of Powers, 4. Correspondence of Form and Matter, 5. The Empiric World of Realities, 6. Word: What It Is, 7. Import of Words, and 8. Import of Propositions. The author presents Bhartṛhari’s thesis on the metaphysics of word and its manifestation in the form of the empirical world. There is a detailed discussion on the nature of sub-sentential parts like varṇa, pada etc. An elaborate discussion on the nature of knowledge of the different parts of a sentence resulting in the knowledge of the whole sentence can be found in this book. A comparative estimate of the relevant views of other Grammarians and other schools of classical Indian philosophy has been attempted by the author.
Gadādhara’s Theory of Objectivity Viṣayatāvāda (Part-Two)
In this book, Sibajiban Bhattacharyya offers a detailed analysis of the text called Viṣayatāvāda, written by Gadādhara. After explaining the traditional Navya-Nyāya theory of objectivity, the author presents the later Navya-Nyāya theory of objecthood where it has been argued that objecthood cannot be cognition itself. Gadādhara’s theory of relation has been analyzed in terms of objecthood of qualified cognition. A detailed analysis of the ideas of qualificandness, qualificandumness, predicatehood could be found in this book.
Swapnavasavadattam
Svapnavasavadattam is an English rendering of the drama Svapnavasavadattam written by Bhasa. Saradaranjan Ray has added his own Sanskrit commentary along with a Bengali translation of the original text. In the introduction, the translator offers an analysis of the features of the literary contribution of Bhasa.