ABSTRACT
A number of older and younger researchers are currently taking part in research on the history of Indian logic. It is thanks to them that today we begin to have an overview over historical connections. Also, they have made us appreciate the individual achievements of Indian thinkers, in particular those of the Buddhist masters Vasubandhu, Asailga, Diilnaga, and Dharmakirti. Chinese and Tibetan translations have been made available and new light has been shed on the much discussed question about the relation between Buddhist and Brahminical logic.1 Unfortunately, there is no correlation between the new philological-historical knowledge and a deeper theoretical understanding. We do not have a satisfactory account of Indian syllogistics, and what can be found about them in the literature is partly unclear and vague and partly false and misleading. There is no doubt about the causes of this predicament. They have to do with the fact that those indologists who have written about formal-logical aspects of Nyaya so far are not familiar with European logic. Even Stcherbatsky's works are not free from this charge. When one looks at the name index of the monumental Buddhist Logic, one has to admire his breadth of knowledge. This is rare among indologists. At the same time, however, it is striking that he cites only philosophers as examples of Western logic. This 'philosophical' logic which was carried out by Erdmann, Lotze, Cohen, and Sigwart among others cannot possibly be seen today as a suitable basis for a critical appraisal of the Indian Nyayaschool. For more than 50 years now there has been a strict scientific logic which really deserves its name; it is the symbolic (mathematical) logic which was anticipated by Leibniz, prepared for by Boole and
Schroder, and founded by Frege and RusselU Without knowledge of the elements of this logic, historical research into Indian logic is unthinkable; this is for the same reasons that the history of Indian mathematics is unthinkable without a positive knowledge of modern mathematics and the history of Indian linguistics is unthinkable without positive knowledge of modern linguistics. The remaining merits of older researchers like Athalye, Jacobi, and Suali among others for research into Nyaya are above all criticism and I am far from claiming that their achievements are wrong or worthless. However, every generation has to solve its own tasks; now that the great philologists, through hard work and scholarly effort, have made the sources of the history of Indian formal logic available and made a first orientation possible, it is time to approach the Nyaya texts with logical, not just with philological or philosophical competence.3
