Ancient Indian Logic as a Theory of Case-Based Reasoning

Abstract

It was Henry COLEBROOKE1 who first brought Indian logic to the attention of the English philosophical world, announcing in a famous lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1824 his discovery of what he called the 'Hindu Syllogism'. COLEBROOKE's 'discovery' consisted in fact in a translation of an ancient Indian treatise, the Nyâya-sutra, a text that dates from around the 1st or 2nd century CE, and is said to be the work of Gautama Aksapâda. Scholars are now inclined to regard it as the amalgamation of two earlier works on philosophical method, one a treatise on the rules and principles of debate, the other a discussion of more general issues in epistemology and metaphysics. In a section on the proper way for a debater to set out their argument, the Nyâya-sutra prescribes a five-step schema for well-formed argument, and it is this schema that COLEBROOKE identified as the Indian syllogism. We now know much much more that COLEBROOKE about the historical