Vishayatavada of Harirama Tarkalankara: Introduction, Critically Edited Text, and English Translation with Explanatory Notes (An Old and Rare Book)

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For the Naiyayikas, the world of ours is real in the sense that it can be the content of a true and uncontradicted knowledge (abadhita-prama-visaya), After having the knowledge of x as long as it is not known that it is not x, there is no reason why one should doubt the reality and existence of x, it is the stand point of the ancient Indian logicians,

The world consists of a number of entities (padarthas). The Vaisesikas prepared six categories of such entities namely, the substance (dravya), quality (guna), action (karman), universal (samanya), ultimate distinguisher (visesa) and inherence (samavaya). The Nyaya- Vaisesikas made it seven by adding absenece (abhava) to the same list of six. These seven were put into two higher categories namely, the category of positive entities and that of negative entities. Note that 'absence' is conceived as real and hence an entity, Precisely, the following seems to be their plan of categorization:

Thus, from the level of padartha we have descended to the level of bhava and abhava and from that of bhava we have come down to the six categories. Notice that these are still categories of entities conceived by the Nyaya-analysts and not the ordinary terms of day-to- day usage by common people, We can still go down taking each of the seven heads separately. For instance, taking the ladder of dravya one can go down as follows:

Observe that we are now nearer our ordinary plane of reference and descending down through each node (prthivi etc.) we can reach our day-to-day terms like ghata, pata etc, referring to the entities with which we behave throughout our life. Nevertheless, the terms prthivi etc, still remain higher terms till we reach the terms ghata, pata etc.