1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)
2. yogic perception
3. self-awareness of cognitions (svasaṃvedana)
4. mānasapratyakṣa (used to access immediately preceding cognitive events)

For Nyāya epistemologists, it includes:

1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)
2. yogic perception
3. mānasapratyakṣa (used to access immediately preceding cognitive events) (including anuvyavasāya)

svasaṃvedana is refused, because cognitions are not transparent. Instead, they are perceptible through anuvyavasāya, which is a form of mānasapratyakṣa.

For Mīmāṃsā epistemologists, it includes:

1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)

Please notice that sense-perception includes, for all Sanskrit philosophers I am aware of, six senses, one of which is manas, which is meant to grasp internal events, typically sukha or duḥkha.

Now, where does Kumārila’s ahampratyaya ‘cognition of the I’ fall into? It cannot be a case of mānasapratyakṣa, because this one is not accepted as a separate way to accept cognitive events (for thorough refutations of it from a Mīmāṃsā point of view, one can check Śālikanātha’s Pramāṇapārāyaṇa, pratyakṣapariccheda or Vācaspati’s Nyāyakaṇikā, on VV chapter 8). It could be a case of indriyapratyakṣa, with the manas working as the sense faculty, but this is odd, given that manas as a sense faculty should grasp a sensory object, like sukha or duḥkha and it is unclear how the aham could qualify as one.

However, this rather generous account of perception comes with some serious and specific boundaries. Perception, to begin with, is only about the present. It cannot grasp the past nor the future. There is no yogic super-sensuous perception that would be able to grasp such features of reality.
Kumārila also denies that cognitions are self-aware (this self-awareness, or svasaṃvedana is considered to be a form of perception by Buddhist epistemologists) and rather claims that we become aware that a cognition has taken place only retrospectively, through arthāpatti. Thus, besides denying self-awareness he also denies the Naiyāyika anuvyavasāya or `apprehension of a previous cognition’, through which one becomes aware of a previous mental event. Why is anuvyavasāya not acceptable for Kumārila? Presumably because it is about something no longer present (this might be the main reason for his general denial of mānasapratyakṣa if it is about prior thoughts).
The only seeming exception is ahampratyaya `cognition of ourselves qua-I’, which grasps something other than an `external’ object. Kumārila still thinks that the I is not a construct, but something objectively real, but he claims that in that specific case we have direct access to it. How exactly is still under investigation (see my previous posts on the matter), but my current understanding is that ahampratyaya grasps the I-as-knower while it is knowing something. It cannot grasp a previous I, otherwise it would violate the boundaries of sense-perception discussed above.
Thus, as much as Kumārila is generous with regard to regular sense-perception, he is strict in denying any sort of perception beyond it.

Buddhist Epistemological School (Dharmakīrti): the self does not exist. The only thing that exists is a stream (santāna) of causally linked momentary cognitions. Cognitions are self-aware of themselves qua cognitions (svasaṃvedana). This is not contradictory, because each cognition has a perceiver and a perceived aspect (grāhaka and grāhya-ākāra respectively).
Nyāya: the self is known only through inference (Vātsyāyana, Jayanta); it is known also through perception (Uddyotakara, Udayana)*
Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā (Kumārila): we have direct access to our self through ahampratyaya `cognition of the I’. No need to infer it, since perception trumps inference and Mīmāṃsā authors require novelty as a criterion for knowledge, so that repeating what is already known through ahampratyaya would not count as knowledge.

The first Nyāya position might lead to problems if connected with the acceptance of yogic perception. Yogins can indeed perceive the self, according to all Naiyāyikas. Why not all other beings, given that perception requires a conjunction of self+manas+sense faculties, that the self is pervasive (vibhu) and that spatial limits are not needed for perception, as shown by the case of absence? Jayanta explains that the self is partless and that a partless thing cannot simultaneously be perceiver and perceived (cf. Kumārila’s argument against the Buddhist idea of cognitions’ having a perceiver and a perceived aspect and Kumārila’s claiming that this does not apply to the self, which is complex and not partless).

The Mīmāṃsā position requires the joint work of intrinsic validity and falsification: some I-cognitions are not about the ātman, since they are indeed falsified (e.g., “I am thin”, which only refers to the body).
Other I-cognitions are not, e.g., cognising ourselves qua knowers and recognising ourselves as the same knower who knew something in the past.

*I am grateful to Alex Watson for discussing the topic with me per email, on top of his decades of work on the topic!

There is a time within Sanskrit philosophy, approximately around 500 to 1000 CE, without which all later discussions do not make sense (whereas one can understand later discussions without referring to, e.g., the Brāhmaṇas, the Pāli canon etc.).
I am thinking of this core of Sanskrit philosophy as the period of time in which philosophers interacted with each other in a dialectical way, learning from each other and being compelled by each other’s points. In other words, as the time in which philosophy was constrained by the need to give reasons for each claim. In this sense, I am not focusing on the Pāli Canon or on the Upaniṣads.

At the core of this period lies the interaction between three schools, namely Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Buddhist epistemological school. No matter the topic, the interaction among these three is always at the center and always needs to be taken into account. According to the various topics, further schools might need to be taken into account. For instance, discussions about atomism will need to take into account the Vaiśeṣika school, discussions about language need to take into account the Vyākaraṇa school.

At the center of this core moment are discussions about epistemology and philosophy of language. It is interesting to note that ontology does not necessarily logically precede epistemology and that the opposite can be the case, especially in the case of Mīmāṃsā. This is particularly evident in the case of discussions about prāmāṇya `validity’.

Sanskrit philosophy developed through debates among thinkers commenting and responding to each other. In this way, they showed that ‘novelty’ is overestimated as a criterion to assess philosophical value and its consistent presence among the criteria reviewers of grants and projects are asked to assess is more the result of a fashion than of inner-philosophical reasons.

This does not mean that individual authors did not deliver substantial contribution to philosophy. Philosophy develops through its history and its history is made by individual thinkers. Nonetheless, these individual thinkers contribute under the garb of a school, downplaying their disagreements with their predecessors and often enveloping them within a commentary on a predecessor’s text, which is meant not just to explain it, but also to enfold all its potential meaning. Some scholars did move from one school to the other (e.g., possibly Vasubandhu or Maṇḍana), others just introduced in one school the elements of the other school they more strongly agreed with (e.g., Jayanta).

Key authors to be kept in mind:
• Dignāga (Buddhist epistemological school), introduced the threefold check, later accepted by all thinkers
• Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā), introduced the concept of intrinsic validity, explained that cognitions are not self-aware, challenged the Dignāga framework, systematised the discussions about absence and the other sources of knowledge (found already in his predecessor, Śabara).
• Dharmakīrti (Buddhist epistemological school), younger contemporary of Kumārila, adjusted the apoha theory and several other epistemological points in the light of Kumārila’s cricitism.
• Jayanta (Nyāya), modified the Nyāya epistemology in the light of Kumārila’s criticism, explained that cognitions are intrinsically doubtful, unless proven right, but that this does not lead to a paralysis, because one can act based on doubt.

First, the facts: The first part defended realism about objects, this second part is about the knowing subject. Arindam argues against fictionalism (especially in chapter 15, entitled “Fictionalism about the mental”), and in favour of the persistence through time of the knowing subject as proven through memory and recognition, but also through our capacity to correct our errors (how else could one correct oneself, if there were not a subject who is aware of the mistake and goes back to it?).

This leads to an important subtopic, namely the epistemology of the knowing subject, which occupies at least two chapters, namely “In Defense of an Inner Sense” (chapter 13) and “Our Knowledge and Error about Our Own Cognitions” (chapter 14).

Another interesting subtopic regards the nature of the defended subject. I have already revealed that Arindam does not defend the Naiyāyika ātman (which is inherently quality-less), but rather a full-fledged knowing subject, closer to an aham than to an ātman. Ram-Prasad’s review says that Arindam is more comfortable with P. Strawson’s concept of person. In Sanskrit terms, one might want to go back to the dialogue with Abhinavagupta (who gets the idea of aham, I believe, from Mīmāṃsā), but Arindam also adds further remarks on the usage of the first-person pronoun (chapter 10). This, in turn, leads to the problem of solipsism and the existence of other knowing subjects (chapter 11). The connection with Abhinavagupta also enables Arindam to discuss a topic which is very much discussed in the Pratyabhijñā school, namely how can one know a subject *qua* subject? Does not one transform it into an object, thus violating its nature, as soon as one approaches it (chapter 12)?

In fact, chapter 11 (a refutation of solipsism entitled “The Self at Other Times and in Other Bodies”) is connected with both the establishment of a first-person-like subject (the topic of chapter 10) and with the inaccessibility of subjects to objectification (dealt with in chapter 12). If we can know other subjects qua subjects, we can at the same time establish the existence of other subjects and the possibility of their non-objectification. Arindam does not mention it, but I can’t avoid thinking of Buber’s “I and Thou” for its emphasis on two modalities of knowledge (an objectifying one, which knows others as things, and a relation one, through which subjects enter in a dialogue).
Chapter 12 also discusses anuvyavasāya, the second cognition occurring after a first cognition during which one becomes aware of having had that first cognition. If we know our cognitions only through anuvyavasāya, then we are not only objectifying other subjects while knowing them, but even ourselves. In fact, we can’t know even ourselves *qua* subjects. By contrast, if Prabhākara is right and each cognitive act includes an awareness of the object, the subject and the cognition, we can know ourselves from within.

Chapter 13 discusses the elusive inner sense faculty (manas) and its domain. Manas is generally invoked to explain one’s perception of inner qualia, such as pleasure and pain and to justify the phenomenon of attention (and lack of thereof) and the impossibility of simultaneous perceptions.
Further, chapter 14 also discusses how manas works as the sense faculty for the successive awareness of a just occurred awareness event. In this case, the contact (sannikarṣa) at stake occurs not directly between manas and the object of the preceding awareness event, but rather via the awareness event itself. It is through this mānasapratyakṣa (my label, Arindam does not use it), that we can move from the perception of an apple to the awareness of “I have seen an apple”.
Moreover, Arindam also mentions manas’ role in the context of language-based knowledge: “In Navya Nyāya semantics, the resulting understanding of meaning is not classified as knowledge by testimony (śabdabodha) or information gathered from words, but as make-believe awareness generated by the manas (āhāryamanasa bodha), which can creatively put together a cow and chairing [found together in a non-sensical poem]” (p. 152). The āhārya (‘artificial’) suggests that manas can also play an active role, and in fact Arindam points out to this possibility while discussing the Yuktidīpikā stance about it. Can this work also in Nyāya? This artificial language-based understanding seems to suggest that manas can concoct a non-committal understanding. Along this line, is manas also able to lead to synaesthetic judgements (“I like this music more than I enjoyed the smell of the jasmine flowers”)? I would be inclined to say that it cannot (since it is a sense faculty, it cannot be responsible for judgements), but any synaesthetic judgement by the buddhi presupposes the manas as being able to run from one sense experience to the next so as to make the buddhi able to formulate a comparative judgement. Let me also follow Arindam’s lead and add an “Unscientific post-script”: Can manas also be responsible for proprio-perception (perception of one’s own body and its position in space as standing, sitting etc.)? Of inner sensations such as hunger? Or are they awareness events and as such cognised like any other awareness event?

Chapter 14 discusses epistemology and intrinsicism (svataḥprāmāṇy) and extrinsicism (parataḥprāmāṇya) in connection with some theories in Analytic epistemology, primarily internalism vs externalism, and then also fallibilism and reflexivism. I discussed aspects of this topic elsewhere (in a nutshell: I think that intrinsic validity disjoins elements that are generally found conjoined in internalism, namely access to cognitions and no external reasons needed). I am also not completely convinced of the connection between infallibilism and intrinsicism. On p. 160, Arindam writes: “If intrinsicism is correct, then once a true cognition is registered, it would be impossible to entertain a doubt about whether it is knowledge or error. But in certain circumstances, when for the first time cognition about an unfamiliar object occurs, it is often made the subject of subsequent doubt”. The last step evokes Gaṅgeśa’s distinction between familiar and unfamiliar circumstances and doubt being the default response only in the latter case. Gaṅgeśa’s was a good step forward if compared to the previous position considering doubt the default attitude in all cases (so that we would not be able to prepare a coffee with our usual coffee machine in the morning before having verified that it is really a coffee machine, that the tin really contains coffee, that the liquid coming from the tap is really water etc. etc.).
Still, I don’t think that the one described by Arindam is a counter-argument against intrinsicism. A svataḥprāmāṇyavādin would say that even in the case of an unfamiliar object, we initially cognise it as X, even if immediately thereafter we might switch on the light, correct ourselves and realise it was not an X but a Y. Overturning the previous cognition is not excluded by svataḥprāmāṇya (in fact, it is its very foundation!), that rather attacks the idea that doubt is our first response to familiar (or unfamiliar) circumstances.

A last word on methodology and the need of Global Philosophy, by Arindam himself: “Within the insular power-enclaves of philosophy, even a mention of non-Western theories […] is punished by polite exclusion. Well-preserved ignorance about other cultures and mono-cultural hubris define the mainstream of professional philosophy in Euro-America. In many cases, the discovery of exciting connections, sharp oppositions, or imaginable parallelisms is greeted with condescension or cold neglect” (p. 145).

Unfortunately, he does not seem to elaborate thereon. Vācaspati elaborates extensively and discusses absent pots on the floor, the sheer floor and all we know after Kumārila. Why does Uddyotakara not elaborate thereon?

Probably because someone else (who?) in the tradition had mentioned this possibility and so readers would have understood what he meant by the mention of the sixth kind of contact.

Moreover, is Uddyotakara’s viśeṣaṇaviśeṣyabhāva the same as what will be later known as saṃyuktaviśeṣaṇatā ‘the fact of being an attribute of something being in contact [with the sense faculties]’?

At the end of an epistemological discussion in a Sanskrit text, it is standard to discuss the sources of knowledge (pramāṇa) you don’t accept. Long-term memory (smṛti) has most likely been already excluded at the beginning, while discussing the definition of pramāṇa, so that it is not mentioned among the specific candidates.

Within Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila excludes (at the end of the discussion on abhāva) sambhava (inclusion) and aitihya (tradition). Within Nyāya, Gautama excludes these two, as well as two sources accepted by Kumārila, i.e. arthāpatti (cogent evidence) and abhāva (absence).

The discussion starts in NS 2.2.1, where an opponent says: “There are not 4 sources of knowledge, because [also] tradition, inclusion, cogent evidence and absence as sources of knowledge”. The discussion then goes on for several pages. NS 2.2.2 says that aitihya is nothing but linguistic communication (śabda) and inclusion is inference (anumāna). This is what Kumārila also says. What is different is that Gautama says that also arthāpatti and abhāva are nothing but inference.

This is remarkable, because the classical position of Nyāya authors (e.g., Jayanta) about absence is that this is known through sense-perception (not inference!). Only after Kumārila’s objections and through Gaṅgeśa etc. they say that in some cases inference is indeed needed (e.g., when you infer now that a certain person was not in a place you visited earlier today).

NS 2.2.3ff focus on arthāpatti, which is now said to be inconclusive (anaikāntika). NS 2.2.7 focuses on abhāva, which is now said to be not a pramāṇa at all, because there is not a corresponding prameya. Please notice that early Nyāya does not accept abhāva as a separate category, whereas this will be later added as the seventh padārtha.

Uddyotakara explains: abhāva is not a source of knowledge, because there is no content for it. Uddyotakara also adds something which seems new, namely that there is indeed a pramāṇa at stake, but that this has as its content something existing (again, weird, given the status of abhāva as padārtha…).

NS 2.2.8 speaks again in favour of abhāva, insofar as it is used to cognise, among marked things, the ones which are not marked.
This seems to prove that abhāva is indeed a source of knowledge, as explained by Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara. NS 2.2.9 goes back to the problem that there is no prameya for such a pramāṇa.

Uddyotakara on NS 2.2.12 explains that there are only two types of absence (prior and posterior absence). This is relevant, because Kumārila had discussed absence as being four-fold (thus, Uddyotakara clearly did not know this classification, since he does not even take notice of it). Interestingly, Vācaspati, commenting on Uddyotakara, feels the need to add that the fact that he mentions two does not mean that he refutes the others.

What does this all tell us about early Nyāya until Uddyotakara and absence?

• 1. that Uddyoataka only knows a 2-fold classification of abhāva as prameya.
• 2. that an early position saw abhāva as part of anumāna (this seems to be also Uddyotakara’s position at the end of his commentary on NS 2.2.2).
• 3. that abhāva is considered a useful epistemological category, e.g., to speak about things lacking a certain characteristic.

The above is based on the commentary on NS 2.2.1–12. I will come back to later passages of the NV.

Addendum: Jhā translates abhāva as “antithesis”. Don’t ask me why.

—Śālikanātha (around the 9th c.), a thinker of the Prābhākara subschool of Mīmāṃsā, has been incredibly influential for almost all Sanskrit philosophy

—a typical methodology of Sanskrit philosophers for finding the truth is examining definitions and refining them by eliminating what is wrong or superfluous and trying to find the perfect definition (see here for Śālikanātha’s refutation of the Buddhist definitions)

—concerning the issue of knowledge, Śālikanātha’s perfect definition of it sounds pretty minimalist: knowledge is experience. This is enough, he thinks, because it excludes memory (which is not experience) and because there is no need to exclude doubt or error. In fact, doubt is not a single cognition but a sum of two correct cognitions. Erroneous cognitions, in turn, do not exist as such, but are only incomplete cognitions. For instance, we might believe that something shiny we see on the beach is silver, whereas it is in fact mother-of-pearl. This is not a real mistake, since the “this” part of the cognition “This is silver” is correct. The “silver” part is just a memory, since it corresponds to the silver we have seen elsewhere and we have been reminded of because of the equally shiny mother-of-pearl. Thus, experience are always correct and “knowledge is experience” is a sufficient definition of knowledge.

What we are going to see today:
Śālikanātha’s definition of sense-perception

Why should we care?
1. Because Śālikanātha is a great thinker, who influenced almost all later Sanskrit philosophers.
2. Because Śālikanātha is an elegant writer, a pleasure to read.
3. Because Śālikanātha has interesting arguments to offer on the topic at stake.

On 3: One might think that the definition of “sense-perception” is easy and that there is no need to discuss it at length. We would probably all agree that it depends on sense-faculties and much of the disagreement has already been dealt with under the heading of the definition of knowledge (such as the issue of infallibilism).
However, this is not the case. First of all, Śālikanātha needs to discuss the (wrong, in his opinion) definitions coming from Dharmakīrti’s school, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā itself. Much of these definitions is wrong because of reasons already discussed in connection with the definition of pramāṇa.

Accordingly, his definition of sense-perception will be minimalist: A direct experience (sākṣātpratīti) generated from the connection of the sense-faculties with the knowable items, i.e., substances, universals and qualities, with or without concepts:

sākṣātpratītiḥ pratyakṣaṃ meyamātṛpramāsu sā |

meyeṣv indriyayogotthā dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā ||

savikalpāvikalpā ca pratyakṣā buddhir iṣyate |

(Amṛtakālā v. 4–5ab)

Since the definition needs to contain nothing redundant, let us analyse each element of it:

• sākṣātpratītiḥ (“it is a direct cognition”): to exclude inference etc. (agreed upon by all schools)
• meyamātṛpramāsu sā (“it is about object, knower and knowledge”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• meyeṣu indriyayogotthā (“it is generated by a contact of the sense-faculties with the objects”): against the idea of intellectual intuition (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school and Nyāya)
• dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā (“it is about substances, universals or qualities”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• savikalpāvikalpā (“it is conceptual or non-conceptual”): it can be conceptual and non-conceptual (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school)

Next, Śālikanātha has to define what counts as perception. Possible candidates are (according to Dharmakīrti’s school):
1. sense-perception
2. mental perception (mānasapratyakṣa)
3. self-awareness (svasaṃvedana)
4. intellectual intuition (yogipratyakṣa)

1. is clearly accepted.

2. is, surprisingly and against Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, accepted (see the discussion about meyamātṛpramāsu sā above). All cognitions are therefore immediately accessible to self-awareness.

3. is refuted. This might be slightly complicated, since manas is not defined as in Nyāya and Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, namely as the inner sense faculty, which can grasp pleasure and pain. Śālikanātha succintly defines mānasapratyakṣa as “produced by the cognition through the sense-faculties together with the instant immediately following the one the instant (kṣaṇa) which has been previously cognised (by the sense faculties)”. The commentator, Jayapuri Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, explains that it is therefore produced by the object and the cognition together. The terminology and the topic itself make Śālikanātha steer here in the direction of discussing Dharmakīrti’s school. He then later (p 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa) refutes it, explaining that it is nothing different than continuous perceptions (dhārāvāhikajñāna), like the ones we have while staring for a long time the same object. By contrast, the so-called mental perception that continues also once the contact with the sense faculties has ceased, is just no longer a case of knowledge, Śālikanātha explains.
4 is refuted. Why? Because what we think to be grasping directly but without the senses (e.g., the four noble truths during deep meditation) is nothing but our memory presenting us with some content we were already acquainted with. There is nothing new that derives from meditation itself. Claiming the opposite is something you can do for religious reasons, not on epistemological bases.

What I would like you to remember of this series?
—Go check Śālikanātha’s extensive Prakaraṇapañcikā if you want to make a stroll in philosophical landscapes, almost all topics are covered, and always with interesting ideas.
—”Knowledge is experience”: there is no error.
—Intellectual intuition is nothing but memory.

First of all, he discusses the criterion of avisaṃvāditva ‘non deviation’ (used by Dharmakīrti and his school) and shows how this is not enough to exclude memory (smṛti). Dharmakīrti could exclude memory because it is conceptual, but this would exclude also inference (anumāna).

Next suggestion (again from Dharmakīrti’s school): using causal efficacy (arthakriyā) as criterion. But in this way memory should again be considered a source of knowledge, since it can be causally efficacious. One could say that, unlike in memory, in the case of inference there is a connection (though indirect) with the object. But this, again, applies to memory as well!

A new attempt is to say that a source of knowledge is identified insofar as it leads to know something unknown (aprāptaprāpaka), which is a criterion typical of Kumārila. A variant thereof is to say that it causes to act people who were previously inactive (pravartakatva), but this would lead to the fact that non-conceptual cognitions (nirvikalpa) would not be sources of knowledge, given that they cannot promote any action.

Why not using aprāptaprāpaka as criterion? Because this would not apply to the case of continuous cognitions (dhārāvāhikajñāna). These are cognitions like the ones originated out of continuously looking at the same object. These count, according to Śālikanātha, as sources of knowledge, but would not be such if the criterion of aprāptaprāmāṇaka were to be the defining one.

What about dṛḍha ‘sure’ as criterion, then?
Here Śālikanātha can give voice to the Prābhākara theory of knowledge. First of all, he asks, what would dṛḍha exclude? If it excludes doubt, then this is wrong, since there is no doubtful cognition. What we call ‘doubt’ is instead the sum of two distinct cognitions (readers might want to recall the fact that for the Nyāya school, doubt is a cognition in which two alternatives are exactly equally probably).
As for erroneous cognitions (bhrānti), these also don’t need to be excluded from the definition of knowledge, because there are no erroneous cognitions. What looks like an erroneous cognitions, is at most an incomplete one. For instance, mistaking mother-of-pearl for silver means rightly recognising a shining thing on the beach + remembering silver. The latter part is not knowledge, but just because it is memory. Śālikanātha similarly treats the case of jaundice and other perceptual errors.

His conclusion is a minimal definition of knowledge: pramāṇam anubhūtiḥ “knowledge is experience”.

(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy blog, where you can also read some interesting comments)