The Nyāya-Sūtras of Gautama

This is a reprint of the English Translation of the Nyaya Sutras of Gautama by Mm. Dr. Ganganatha Jha, the versatile Sanskrit scholar who will ever be remembered for his dedicated and selfless pioneer work and immense contribution in the field. The work was first published serially in the Indian Thought (Vols. IV-XI), a quarterly journal devoted to Sanskrit learning, over a period of eight years from 1912 to 1919.

Dr. Jha’s translation covers a large field and includes, besides the original Sutras of Gautama, the Bhasya of Vatsyayana and the Vartika of Uddyotakara in full as well as relevant notes from Vacaspatimisra’s Nyayavartika-tatparyatika, Udayana’s Tatparyaparisuddhi and Raghuttama’s Bhasyacandra. The work naturally became enormous in bulk and it is not surprising that it took for its completion so many years and so much energy of the author and as many as 1800 pages in print. Perhaps this also explains why in spite of the great utility and importance of the work no publisher could venture to bring it out in a book form during the past so many decades.

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The Nyaya-sutras is attributed to Gautama, who was at least the principal author. According to Karl Potter, this name has been a very common Indian name, and the author is also reverentially referred to as Gotama, Dirghatapas and Aksapada Gautama. Little is known about Gautama, or which century he lived in. Scholarly estimates, based on textual analysis, vary from the 6th century BCE, making him a contemporary of Buddha and Mahavira, to as late as the 2nd century CE. Some scholars favor the theory that the cryptic text Nyaya-sutras was expanded over time by multiple authors, with the earliest layer from about mid-first millennium BCE that was composed by Gautama. The earliest layer is likely to be Book 1 and 5 of the text, while Book 3 and 4 may have been added last, but this is not certain.