Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian Perspective: Implications in the Nyaya Sutra

Abstract

As Aristotle began to codify rhetorical practices in Greece, a theoretical and pragmatic text on argument, the Nyaya Sutra, emerged in Ancient India, founding one of six key philosophies of India. Though it describes in detail a procedure of reasoning based on a five-part method of dialogic presentation, the rhetorical emphases of the Nyaya approach have been mostly overlooked. This essay proposes Nyaya's inclusion in the field of rhetorical studies, exploring its methods within their historical context, comparing its approach to the traditional logical syllogism, and relating it to the contemporary perspectives of Stephen Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Chaïm Perelman.

Notes

¹Special thanks to RR peer reviewers George Kennedy and Richard Fulkerson, whose comments proved invaluable, and also to Uma Krishnan for her insights into Indian terminologies. Thanks also to Lindsay Brunner for editing and formatting.

²I follow Matilal's phrase “Nyaya method” to describe the five-part “syllogism” in Nyaya's approach to argument. Avayava, or members, not a technical name for the approach, identifies its role in terms of the other elements—the “members,” or elements of argument, much like Toulmin's Elements of Argument. Sinha quotes Vidyabhusana: “Technically the word Nyaya signifies a syllogism (or a speech of five parts) …” (Vidyabhusana v).

³See Sinha's introduction to Vidyabhusana's translation of the Sutras for a detailed discussion of the variances in number of aphorisms and debates on authorship. See also Daya Krishna's Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective.

⁴The six schools of thought were, according to I. M. Bochenski, Samkhya: dualistic ontology and cosmology; Yoga: systemization of mythical and ethical practice; Purva-mimamsa: monistic physics; Nyaya: epistemology, logic, and methodology; Vaisesika: realistic ontology and systematics (116–17).

⁵Daya Krishna believes moksha is not the goal of Nyaya, that the inclusion of the idea of moksha in the Sutra was a formality and Nyaya has “nothing to do with moksha” (31). He believes much of Hindu thought, like argument, is motivated by more pragmatic concerns. He admits that both ancient and modern commentators throughout time have found moksha integral to Nyaya.

⁶Definitions not attributed to a particular author come from the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon (http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/).

⁷The Greeks also had a five-part model of argument, the epicheirme: the proposition, the reason, the proof of the reason, the embellishment, and the resume. The terms resemble Toulmin's six-part model, since the “proof of the reason” is not a specific example, as in the Nyaya method, but arguments in support of the reason, similar to Toulmin's “backing.” The “embellishments” imply Toulmin's “conditions of rebuttal” or Nyaya's “confutation” or “ascertainment.” Quintilian's Institutio Oratia, Book V, Chapter 14 discusses the epicheireme, syllogism, and enthymeme.

⁸Matilal's explanations for the linguistic relations of the elements are most detailed. What we might refer to in linguistics or logic as a “property” of a term is more complex in Sanskrit. Properties are normally physical, like the wings of a bird, or “qualities, like color or shape, or attributes like motion of a moving body,” or even “abstract universals” like “bird-ness” or “dog-ness.” Sanskrit includes also “concrete substantial masses like the particular body of water or fire, or even objects like a post or rock” (27). Smoke can also “contain” a mountain. He uses the terms locatee and loci or locus instead of property: The fire (locatee) contains the mountain (the locus) (respectively dharmas and dharmins). At its very basis, Sanskrit “is not a language without particulars, but a language of particulars only, the universal element being implicitly present only in the relational factor—the combiner of the locus and the locatee” (27).

⁹ Nyaya bears some resemblance to Toulmin's “reasoning from signs” (Toulmin, Rieke, and Janik 222–25). However, the authors simply replace what is normally termed the “data” with signs from which an argument is inferred. They do attach an example to the reason. Discussion on this matter appears later.

¹⁰See Shayer for a detailed discussion of the differences between Aristotle's syllogism and the Indian formula.

¹¹Because Nyaya lacks a premise, it might be compared to Aristotle's enthymeme, but the syllogism's premise is still implied in the enthymeme.

¹²Ingalls suggests the Indian formulation is “Occamist rather than Aristotelian, since the ‘reason’ always corresponds to a singular proposition” (142).

¹³Ganeri, following the lead of some nineteenth-century philosophers, notes that the model probably was dialogic, each step a response to a “silent interlocutor.” Ingall's version reflects a similar insight:

1. What is your thesis? That the hill has fire on it.

2. Why? Because smoke is there.

3. So what? Where there is smoke, there is fire: e.g. the kitchen.

4. And? The hill is such a smoky place.

5. So? Therefore, it has fire.

¹⁴See Schayer.

¹⁵In 1932 Schayer noted that “the Indian syllogism is not a logical theorem but a combination of two rules of inference: the upanaya [application] and the nigamana [conclusion]”—the fourth and fifth steps—“this is so,” and “conclusion.” He compares these to rules of modern logic: substitution for “wherever there is smoke there is fire” (a concrete example is substituted—that is, this mountain is smoking and so is on fire); and separation (separates the reason from its implication). Schayer admits that Nyaya only implies the first rule in the fourth step, since it does not apply the general “wherever there is smoke there is fire” explicitly.

¹⁶In spite of later adaptations and the emergence of a new Nyaya movement (Navya-Nyaya) during the West's Medieval period, Nyaya never dropped the immediate, the concrete from argument (see Ingalls 142–43).

¹⁷According to later Navya-Nyaya explanations, “the subject (paksha) possesses a certain property (dharma), (knowledge which is) qualified by the vyapti” (Ingalls 141). Vyapt, usually translated “pervasion,” is not an abstract application of a general principle, but a property relation, as smoke with fire. See note 6.