Logik, Dialektik und Epistemologie der Nyaya Tradition: Eine kritische Ausgabe des fünften Kapitels deer Nyayasutra und Nyayabhasya.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Eliahu Franco
• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2010 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 178975530

The Nyaya ("logic") is one of the most important traditions of classical Indian philosophy. With much emphasis on logic, epistemology and metaphysics, its systematization as a full-fledged philosophical tradition progressed during the Kushana dynasty (1st-3rd c. CE) and crystallized during the time of Gupta rule in South Asia (4th-6th c.). Its foundational treatise, the Nyayasutra, consists of five chapters and is ascribed to sage Akshapada. It must have been finalized by anonymous redactors in the second half of the fourth century and was commented upon shortly afterwards by Pakshilasvamin Vatsyayana. Vatsyayana's commentary, the Nyayabhashya, is of crucial importance not only for our understanding of the early phase of Nyaya philosophy and the earliest form of the Nyayasutra, but also for expanding our knowledge of other philosophical traditions, of which only a fraction has survived, or which have been transmitted in part only in Chinese and Tibetan translations and sources. In spite of its undisputed significance for the study of Indian philosophy, the Nyayabhashya has not yet been critically edited. The need for a new, truly critical edition of the Nyayabhashya has been amply demonstrated by the first phase of this DFG pilot project (2010-2013) centered on the fifth chapter as well as FWF-funded projects that have been conducted in Vienna since 2004. The project is also conceived as a complement to the Vienna project, which has been limited to the first two chapters of the work. Copies of seventy manuscripts of the Nyayabhashya were procured mainly from India. The critical edition of the fifth chapter prepared in the pilot project is based on a stemma of twenty manuscripts selected after collation of thirty-four primary witnesses. The project proposed here aims to establish a critical text of the fourth chapter, which deals with metaphysical, ethical and soteriological topics. To establish a critical text of this chapter, nineteen manuscripts will be used. Further effort will be made to obtain copies of a few other known manuscripts and to locate still unknown exemplars in the Indian subcontinent. Independent testimonia will also be systematically explored. Special software that can handle the complex and extensive data and perform the phylogenetic analysis of the manuscripts will be used for the collation and establishment of the critical edition as well as for the establishment of a stemma codicum. A subsequent project aiming at a critical edition of chapter three is planned, so that a complete critical edition of the Nyayasutra and Nyayabhashya will be available to the scholarly world. The resulting text will form a reliable and well-founded tool that will serve as a source for future studies on Nyaya philosophy, as well as a basis for a new translation that can be supplemented by in-depth philological and historical annotations for readers interested in Indian philosophical tradition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants