Sanskrit Manuscripts : Tattvacintāmaṇiprabhā

Yajñapati Upādhyāya

Sanskrit Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>One of the two only existing manuscripts of the unpublished “section on perception” (<i>pratyakṣakhaṇḍa</i>) of Yajñapati Upādhyāya’s <i>Tattvacintāmaṇiprabhā</i>, the earliest known commentary on Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya’s masterpiece (Bhattacharya, K. 1985: 725). The author of this very rare and important work, often mentioned in Sanskrit sources simply as “Upādhyāya”, belonged to the Mithilā school of “New Logic” (<i>Navya-Nyāya</i>) and was probably active around 1450 (Bhattacharya, D.C. 1958: 162, Mishra 1966: 300). He was the son of one Śivapati, who also wrote works on Nyāya, and most probably the teacher of Jayadeva Miśra (alias Pakṣadhara Miśra), who often disagrees with his views (Bhattacharya, D.C. 1958: 122). Of the remaining sections of Yajñapati’s work, the section on inference (<i>anumāna</i>) has been published (Bhattacharya, G. 1984; emendations proposed in Bhattacharya, K. 1989), while the section on speech (<i>śabda</i>), which certainly existed, has not been found yet. The manuscript is incomplete (ff. 5-13, 15-25 and 116 are missing, and the text is interrupted on f. 117), and was copied by at least three different hands. The preserved part covers the beginning of the section on perception, almost up to the end of the “discussion on the validity of cognitions” (<i>prāmāṇyavāda</i>). It ends with the very beginning of the last sub-section, dealing with the defining characteristic of a valid cognition (<i>pramālakṣaṇa</i>). The text commented on the last folio corresponds to p. 372 in the first volume of the first edition of Gaṅgeśa’s <i>Tattvacintāmaṇi</i> (Calcutta, 1888). </p>