The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

109 - The Philosophical Systems
Vātsyāyana, while the Maṇimēkhalai belongs to a period when
Vātsyāyana’s teaching had not come into vogue.
Then the other instruments of knowledge, according to the
Maṇimēkhalai, are Pakṣa, Hētu, ṣṭānta, Upanaya and Nigamana.
The work proceeds to define each and illustrates it by examples.
These are obviously the five limbs (avayava) of a syllogism as
accepted by the Naiyāyikas of the Brahmanical systems. The five
names according to them are Pratijña, Hētu, Udāharaṇa, Upanaya,
Nigamana. It will be seen that only the names of one and three differ
from the Maṇimēkhalai recital, in the sense of using different words,
synonymous though they are. After dealing with the first three
elaborately, defining and illustrating, the Maṇimēkhalai comes to the
conclusion that the connected Upanaya and Nigamana may both be
ṣṭānta, and as such, are not considered separately. Then
the work proceeds to consider the good and the bad applications of
the three Pakṣa, Hētu, and ṣṭānta.
Dignāga, on the contrary, starts with the statement ‘demonstration
and refutation together with their fallacies are useful in arguing with
others, and perception and inference together with their fallacies are
useful for self-understanding. Seeing these I compiled the Śāstra’
(Introduction to the Nyāyapravēśa). He proceeds to state clearly that
Pakṣa, Hētu and ṣṭānta are the three limbs of a syllogism, and it is
by means of these that knowledge is imparted clearly to a questioner
who does not understand it already, and enforces the position by the
following statement: ‘That these three are therefore [73] generally
spoken of as the three limbs of a syllogism.’ Nyāyapravēśa is quoted
in a very recently published work Tatvasaṁgraha in the Gaikwad’s
Oriental Series. It is worth observing in regard to this that the