Darshana #1 of 6 · c. 2nd century BCE
न्याय
Nyaya Darshana
Nyāya
Founder: Maharshi Gautama (Akshapada)
Root text: Nyaya Sutras (न्यायसूत्र)
Central thesis
Liberation (moksha) is reached by correct knowledge, and correct knowledge requires the formal study of valid reasoning. Nyaya supplies the toolkit — definitions of inference, fallacy, debate — that every other darshana borrows.
Summary
Nyaya is the Hindu school of logic and epistemology. Its founding work, the Nyaya Sutras of Gautama, opens by listing sixteen padarthas — the categories of debate — beginning with pramana (valid means of knowledge), prameya (objects of knowledge), and ending with nigrahasthana (grounds on which a debater is defeated). For Nyaya, suffering comes from mithyajnana (false knowledge) about the self, and only systematic inquiry — perception, then inference, then comparison, then verbal testimony — can dispel it. The school is most famous for codifying the five-membered Indian syllogism (pratijna, hetu, udaharana, upanaya, nigamana), which gave classical Hindu and Buddhist thinkers a shared technical language for centuries.
Key concepts
- ●Sixteen padarthas (categories of debate)
- ●Five-membered syllogism (pratijna–hetu–udaharana–upanaya–nigamana)
- ●Mithyajnana (false knowledge) as the root of samsara
- ●Hetvabhasa (fallacies of reasoning)
- ●Ishvara as inferred efficient cause of the world
Accepted pramanas
Means of valid knowledge
- · Pratyaksha (perception)
- · Anumana (inference)
- · Upamana (comparison)
- · Shabda (verbal testimony)
Liberation path
Apavarga — cessation of suffering by clear discrimination of the eternal Self from the body, mind, and sense organs, achieved through tattva-jnana (knowledge of categories).
Key texts
- · Nyaya Sutras of Gautama
- · Nyaya Bhashya of Vatsyayana
- · Nyaya Vartika of Uddyotakara
- · Tattva Cintamani of Gangesha (Navya-Nyaya)
Modern relevance
Every contemporary Hindu legal, theological, or philosophical debate still uses Nyaya vocabulary — hetu, anumana, drstanta. Navya-Nyaya supplied the technical language for Sanskrit grammar, jurisprudence, and even early modern science across South Asia.