Life
Shridhara was a Vaisheshika commentator of the tenth century CE, known primarily through the Nyāyakandalī. Biographical reconstruction is limited, and he should not be conflated with unrelated authors of the same name. His place in philosophy rests on his sustained interpretation of Prashastapada.
Contribution
He explains and defends the school’s categories while engaging questions of perception, inference and the relation between objects and their properties. His work belongs to a period in which Buddhist and Brahmanical thinkers challenged one another’s accounts of what exists and how it can be known.
Key works
- Nyāyakandalī
- A commentary on Prashastapada’s Padārthadharmasaṃgraha, traditionally dated to 991 CE.
Legacy
Shridhara shows how a realist tradition develops through detailed interpretive labour. Saying that an object exists independently of thought is only the beginning: a philosopher must also explain how the object is identified, how its qualities belong to it and why cognition sometimes goes wrong. His commentary gives later readers a fuller view of these commitments.
Can two objects share a quality without becoming the same object?
Sources
- Reference
- Reference
- Original textSanskrit transliteration
Kaṇāda: Vaiśeṣikasūtra (opens in a new tab)
GRETIL · Göttingen State and University Library
How to read itNozawa Masanobu’s electronic text. Sūtra numbering varies by recension. Read the opening discussion of dharma and categories with this caveat.
- University guideEnglish
Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika — IGNOU teaching unit (opens in a new tab)
IGNOU · public university, India
How to read itAn introductory teaching unit on knowledge, causation, categories and liberation. Read its historical attributions alongside the more cautious dates in the biographies.