The Buddhist offers an inference from the Nyaya standpoint to prove that universals are not positive entities but are differences from others: Cow-ness is difference from non-cows because it has both positive and negative features. Whatever has both positive and negative features is nothing but difference from others. Thus, not being measurable has the positive feature of being related to time and the negative feature of not being prior absence and is nothing but difference from being measurable. Cow-ness too has the positive feature (in the Nyaya view) of being, say, eternal and the negative feature, say, of not being horse-ness. So, cow-ness is nothing but difference from non-cows and so on, mutatis mutandis, for other universals. Udayana objects that this inference is unsound from the Buddhist standpoint: Self-differentiating unique particulars that alone are real for the Buddhists are not measurable; but these are not taken to be mere difference from others that is a non-entity for these are taken to be real.

Although ancient Greek and Indian philosophers held remarkably similar philosophical positions, the possibility of these two traditions having developed independently cannot be discounted. However, in the fifth century BCE substantial parts of Greece and India were under the Persian rule and belonged to the same political entity. It is very likely that Greeks and Indians sat together in the Persian court where translation services were provided to mitigate the language barrier. In the fourth century BCE there were Greek kingdoms for more than a century in and around northwest frontiers of India paving the way for substantial political and commercial contact. Greeks like Megasthenes, Diogenes Laertius, Suidas, Porphyry, etc. testify that eminent Greek thinkers like Democritus, Pyrrho, etc. visited India and/or that Plato, Plotinus, etc. knew about or admired Indian wisdom. Some of this evidence is relatively late but cannot be dismissed in the absence of specific rebuttal; thus, Indo-Greek scholarly exchange is likely.

Rather than considering paradox in a literal sense to be unresolvable, both Bhartṛhari and the Daoists develop a distinctive hermeneutics to decipher them, always exploring an overarching meaning where the fundamental differences are contained within. The conversation on paradox escapes the boundary of paradox then, as it relates to interpreting negation, and above all, the philosophy of semantics. Being and non-being, one and many, or something being both true and false at the same time are examples found from their texts. Just as the static and dynamic domains of the Dao remain a key to address paradox in Chinese literature, the stratification of speech, wherein deeper layers of speech are capable of resolving the apparent tension found at the surface level, seems central to Bhartṛhari’s approach.

This article examines the basic content of the Brahmasutra and compares and contrasts the commentaries of Ramanuja and Shankara on it. Firstly the issue of possible errors or interpolations in the BSis addressed. Then the full contents of the BS is surveyed briefly but with important detail. Finally, the important disagreements between the commentaries of Ramanuja and Shankara on the BSare discussed. This includes discussion of selected sutras in question.

This article brings together the Aryan Semitic and Sinitic super-cultures in a comparative light in terms of religious numerological leitmotifs. Vedic Hinduism and Zoroastrianism together with the pre-Christian religions of Indo-European Europe belong to this group. Buddhism and to a lesser extent Jainism are also part of this grouping. Judaism and Islam belong to the Semitic group. Daoism and Confucianism come under the Sinitic group. Christianity and Sikhism are hybrid religions that have one leg in the Aryan group and one leg in the Semitic group. The numbers three, six and nine are the hallmarks of Aryan culture the numbers one five and seven are expressed throughout Semitic culture and the numerals three five and eight have received their expression in Chinese culture.

It is not easy to reconcile naturalistic philosophy with religion. However, naturalism can be applied to religion in two ways-either as a methodological approach or as a world view. Two religious thinkers of early 20th century America, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu spiritual teacher from India and John Dewey, the great American pragmatist, exemplify these two strands of religious naturalism. This paper intends to show how the adoption of a naturalistic outlook towards religion enabled each thinker to interpret their core philosophies, as diverse as Hindu Idealism and American Pragmatism, in a way that appealed to the humanism of the age, thus securing the foundations of religion rather than weakening it.

Jnanasri, a famous 10th century Buddhist philosopher, holds that internal states like cognition alone are real and that there is no external, independent physical world. He argues that one may perceive something, say, a horse, irrespective of whether there is a horse or not. Accordingly, one cannot justifiably move from cognition to the external, independent existence of the object of cognition. Udayana points out that one misperceives only something that one in the ultimate analysis has perceived before. While the previous perception may be false, it cannot be false always for then there is a vicious infinite regress. So true perceptions must also be admitted. The best explanation of true perception is that it is perceiving something where and when it is and that of false perception is that it is perception of something that is elsewhere or elsewhen or both. Thus, the Nyaya claims, the object of misperception too is external and independent of perception. Since the Nyaya position is not refuted, the above argument of Jnanasri suffers from assuming the bone of contention.

A cognition is a psychological property distinct from the properties of a person's body and objects of sensory experience. A cognition rests or occurs in a self, and for only an instant before giving way to another cognition, each having as content, when veridical, intersubjective objects other than itself. But a cognition is also causally continuous with its objects—in the one direction, through the operation of the sense organs, sight, hearing, and so on, and, in the other, in having a causal role in action undertaken voluntarily. This paper sketches the Nyāya theory of perception with special attention to the arguments of the "New" or late Nyāya philosopher of the fourteenth century, Gangesa, in addressing two thorny areas of the Nyāya picture: (1) focus wanted and unwanted along with apparent cognitive simultaneity in a synthesis of sensory information deriving from the operation of more than one sense organ, and (2) the peculiar sensory connection involved in perception of future instances of universals, illusorty perception, and in recognition of someone or something that one has encountered before.