Navyanyaya

(“new Nyaya”) A later branch of the
Nyaya philosophical school. The Nyaya
school was one of the six schools in traditional Hindu philosophy, which flourished in the early centuries of the first
millennium, but then lost its influence.
The Navyanyaya school developed in
late medieval times (15th–17th c.), in an
attempt to reinvigorate the school and
to resolve some of the problems with the
earlier Nyaya notion of inherence
(samavaya). The earlier Nyayas perceived inherence as a weak relational
force that connected objects and their
qualities—for example, connecting the
color red with a particular ball and thus
making the ball red. It also connected
material objects—the force that held a
clay pot together once the two halves
had been pressed against each other.
Finally, inherence connected selves and
their qualities—one became happy
when inherence connected happiness
to one’s self, and unhappy when unhappiness was connected.
This notion of inherence explained
many things in the perceivable world.
However, objections were raised against
the Nyayas’ insistence that inherence
was a single, universal property at work
in different places. According to this
criticism, a universal and eternal inherence could link an object with any
property, including ones that contradict—the color brown with the moon or
the appearance of a cow with a dog.
Other attacks questioned whether
inherence continued to exist after one of
the things it had been connecting was
destroyed. If it did not, opponents
claimed, then inherence was clearly
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nothing to begin with, whereas if it did,
then the remaining connecting power
would exist unconnected to anything,
which was clearly absurd. Finally, some
attacked the need for inherence at all—
which was cited as an example of “needless complexity” (gaurava).
The Navyanyaya school attempted to
sidestep these problems by positing a
new class of relationship, that of “selflinking connectors.” These connectors
were seen as an integral part of all
things, by their very nature, and since
they were self-linking, this eliminated
the need for a separate inherence to
connect things together. In this understanding, the relationship and the related
objects are one and the same. This
notion allowed the Navyanyayas to
retain their fundamental assumptions
that there are real objects in the world
and they are connected to one another.
For further information see Karl H.
Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya
(eds.), Indian Philosophical Analysis,
\1992.