On the banks of the Kamala River, at Kairon village, Gangeśa Upādhyāya was born to a Brahmin family (Phillips, S, 2020). As detailed by tradition, Gangeśa was illiterate in his early years but as a gift from the goddess Kali, he later acquired the knowledge of logic. There exists some folklore that tells the story of how he came from being deemed an “idiot” from birth to his later, knowledgeable, and revered state. The story says that his in-laws would always give him bones of fish during meals and he would eat them, which for many reasons is likely not good for you. But one day, they say he left his home and went to Varanasi, a city near the Ganges river, known for its transformative and spiritual qualities. After studying the Vedas, when he came back to his house and when his in-laws gave him fish bones, he refused to eat them and told them he was now a man of honor. His family then acknowledged him as an intellectual and finally treated him properly. Genealogical records kept in Mithilā suggest that he had a wife and three sons and a daughter. One son, Vardhamāna Upādhyāya, later became a noted Nyāya philosopher.
During the first half of the fourteenth century in Mithilā, northeastern India, Gaṅgeśa was a well-known Nyāya scholar, a school of thought noted for its logic and critical reasoning, as well as one of Mīmāṃsā, a school recognized for Vedic interpretation and ritualism (Phillips, S, 2020). Mīmāṃsā is a long-standing tradition that, like Nyāya, made pronouncements on virtually every subject imaginable. However, Vedic ritual was the school’s area of expertise, the way critical thinking was for the Nyāya. Gaṅgeśa was well-versed in Mīmāṃsaka stances and is assumed to have studied the prescribed course material in the grammarian literature, the epic poems, etc., some of which he cites, for example, Pāṇini (c. 500 BCE), and the Bhagavad Gītā
Gangeśa is credited with founding the Navya-Nyāya or “Neo-Logical” school, which was a progression from the traditional Nyāya ideology and was carried on by Raghunatha Siromani of Nabadwipa, Bengal (Phillips, S, 2020). The writings of older thinkers Vācaspati Miśra and Udayana also had an impact on Navya-Nyāya. It remained an active school in India until the 18th century. The sophisticated language and conceptual framework that Navya-Nyāya established allowed it to pose, examine, and address logical and epistemological issues. All of the Nyāya concepts were organized into four basic categories: (sense-) perception (pratyakşa), inference (anumna), comparison or resemblance (upamna), and testimony (sound or word; abda).
Gangeśa’s book, Tattvacintāmaṇi, or “Thought-Jewel of Reality,” offered a set of criticisms of Nyāya theories of thought and language (Phillips, S, 2020). In his book, Gangeśa both addressed some of those external criticisms and – more important – critically examined the Nyāya school’s own beliefs from an insider perspective. He held that, while critics had failed to successfully challenge the Nyāya realist ontology, their and Gangeśa’s own criticisms brought out a need to improve and refine the logical and linguistic tools of Nyāya thought, to make them more rigorous and precise. Tattvacintāmaṇi addressed all the significant facets of Indian philosophy, including logic, set theory, and particularly epistemology, which Gangeśa extensively analyzed while creating and refining the Nyāya scheme. Other schools of thought adopted and utilized the findings, particularly his theory of qualificative cognition as the way we procure valid knowledge.
References:
Phillips, S. (2020, June 18). Gaṅgeśa. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gangesa/