Abstract

When we study Indian teachings on logic, we have customarily confined ourselves to the study of its formal logic, i.e., Nyaya and Hetu-vidya . We have seldom dealt with India's dialectical thought and its mode of logic. In fact, India's dialectical logical thought is even more ancient than its formal logic; it was produced before the emergence of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C. By the time of Buddhism, Indian dialectical thinking had already come to possess a rather complete theory and form, or as Engels put it in the essay "Natural Dialectics," it had already reached a higher stage of development. This relatively highly developed mode of dialectical thought in ancient India was a multilayered or multilevel mode of logic-this is its unique characteristic. In this essay I propose to suggest a few exploratory viewpoints concerning the origin and the major developmental stage-i.e., the Buddhistic phase-of this multilevel Indian dialectical thought