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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


This book is the result of four years of rigorous research and academic peer-review, reflecting our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within academia.

Nyāyapariśuddhi

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Nyāyapariśuddhi literally means ‘a work that purifies the Nyāya philosophy’.

Next to Rāmānuja,[1] only Vedānta Deśika[2] was the most important teacher of the philosophy of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Realizing the importance of logic in establishing one’s own school and in countering the arguments of the opposing schools, he composed two works-the Nyāyapariśuddhi and the Nyāyasiddhāñjana which are complementary.

The Nyāyasutras of Gautama[3] had been accepted by all the philosophers who believed in the final authority of the Vedas as a basic work of logic. However, the commentators who developed the Nyāya system, paid overwhelming attention to the pramāṇas[4] rather than the prameyas.[5]

With a view to ‘purifying’ or correcting this imbalance,[6] Deśika wrote these two works wherein he has tried to show that the philosophy of the Nyāyasutras with regard to the pramāṇas, is the same as that of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. This work has five chapters. They are:

  1. Pratyakṣādhyāya - It deals with the subject of direct perception.
  2. Anumānādhyāya - It deals with the subject of inference.
  3. Śabdādhyāya - It deals with the subject of scriptural testimony.
  4. Smṛtyadhyāya - It deals with the secondary scriptures.
  5. Prameyādhyāya - It deals with the objects of knowledge like the world, the soul and God.

The second chapter is the longest. Since he could not amplify the prameya part sufficiently in this work, he wrote the second work, the Nyāya-siddhāñjana, wherein his objective was fulfilled.


References[edit]

  1. He lived in A. D. 1017-1137.
  2. He lived in A. D. 1268-1370.
  3. He lived around 550 B. C.
  4. Pramāṇas means the means of knowledge.
  5. Prameys means objects of knowledge.
  6. Pariśuddhi means purifying.
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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