178 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. { August, 1905. 
whole body of Sitras, there is nothing which corresponds to the 
“Nine Reasons” and ‘“ Fourteen Fallacies,’ which, we know 
from Chinese sources, and which even Din-naga is said to have 
attributed to Soc-mock. An examination of the “ Nine Reasons” 
reveals the fact, that it is historically prior to the invention of 
syllogism. It means an effort of the human mind to exhaust 
all possible forms of the relation between, whatis now called the 
Major Term and the Middle Term of a syllogism. And such 
an examination must precede the formulation of syllogism. In 
what light the later writers have seen this examination, and 
what conclusions may be drawn from it, need not trouble us 
here. Suffice it for a historical student to know, that this early 
effort is attributed to Soc-mock, universally known as the first 
writer on Nyaya. Thetheory of “Fourteen Fallacies” too, in 
their crude and undeveloped shape, shows signs of greater 
antiquity than the Nyaya Sitras. 
These two theories of Aksapada seem to have been the com- 
mon property of Indian pandits before Buddha’s time, as Buddha 
did not scruple to take advantage of these. 
The “ Nyaya Siitras,” as we have them, seems to be a much 
later production, Haribhadra, a Jain scholar of the 6th Century 
A.D., says that it isa sectarian work; that the sect, which either 
composed it or adhered to it, was a Saiva sect. Now a Saiva or 
Mahesvar sect existed long before Buddha. Soc-mock and the 
eighteen gurus of the sect, Nakulisha and others, might have be- 
longed to this sect. That the Sitras were not composed by 
Akgsapida appears to be almost certain. But it bears his name. 
How to explain this fact ? The only explanation is that it belonged 
to that sect, of which he was thought to be one of the earliest 
representatives. I am not sure if the work “ Nyayasitra”’ had 
not gone through several redactions before it assumed its present 
shape. But it is pretty sure that from the time of Soc-mock to the 
period when the Nyayasttras were reduced to their present form, 
India was full of polemical writings, much of which has perished. 
Though we know nothing from Brahmanical sources of the 
process of the development of Nyaya, we know some stages of this 
development from the Buddhists. Nagarjuna and Maitreya wrote 
on Nyaya. In fact one of the volumes, I believe, the fifteenth of the 
great polemical work by Nagarjuna on Upayakausalya is devoted 
to the exposition of Nyaya. Maitreya, Asanga and Vasubandhu 
—all wrote on Nyadya. Then came the great Din-naga, the dis- 
ciple of Asanga, whom the Japanese place between 410 to 500 A.D., 
and Kern between 520 and 600. 
But in the meanwhile on the Brahminical side the Sitra has 
been reduced to its present shape and a Bhasya has been composed 
when, nobody can say. If am permitted to hazard a conjecture, 
both the Sttra and Bhashya came after the development of the 
Mahayana School, i.e., both came after Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, 
say in the 2nd Century A.D. The Bhasyakara,- Vatsyayana, 
though he does not even mention the Buddhists or even any Bud- 
dhist writers, pointedly refutes all the Mahayanists doctrines of 
