Nyayalilavati

Nyayalilavati is a Vaiseshika text by Vallabhacharya. This Vallabhacharya is different from the Vallabhacharya who founded a Vaishnava sect. The exact date of Vallabhacharya is not known. He is connected with the Karnata dynasty of Mithila under Nanyadeva, who flourished from 1097 to 1147 CE. On this basis we can assume that he lived in the first half of the 12^th century CE. He was a Vaiseshika, who very closely follows Prasastapada.

The text has four chapters divided into 75 sections. The text follows mutatis mutandis, the model of Prasastapada’s Padarthasamgraha.

Nyayalilavati recognizes a six-fold classification of categories –

1. Dravya (substance)
2. Guna (quality)
3. Karma (action)
4. Samanya (generality or universality)
5. Visesha (particularity)
6. Samavaya (inherence)

Vallabha does not recognize the categories propounded by the Mimamsakas and others, namely, that of

1. Abhava (absence or negation)
2. Tamas (darkness)
3. Moment
4. Shakti (causal efficacy)
5. Jnatata (knownness)
6. Self- linking connection, such as relation between substratum and superstratum,
7. Sadrshya (similarity)

Vallabha includes sadrshya under samanya. Even negation (abhava) is not taken as an additional instrument of knowledge. He does not accept verbal testimony as a separate source of knowledge; this he puts under inference itself. Judgments (buddhi) consist of two categories, vidya (knowledge) and avidya (non-knowledge). For Vallabha, pratyaksha (perception), anumana (inference), apamana (comparison) and so on are the means of right knowledge; but for him, arthapatti (presumption), sambhava (probability), and aitihya (tradition) are not separate means of right knowledge.