The Tarka-Saṃgraha (तर्क-संग्रह)

This is Annambhaṭṭa (अन्नम्भट्ट)'s primer, written so a beginner can learn how to think before opening Gautama's Nyāya-sūtra (न्याय-सूत्र) or the Brahma-sūtra (ब्रह्म-सूत्र). The closing verse says what the book is for: the training of beginners in the views of Kaṇāda (कणाद) and of Nyāya (न्याय). The opening verse says the same thing as bālānāṃ sukhabodhāya (बालानां सुखबोधाय), for the easy understanding of beginners.

The book is prose, in short paragraphs. One paragraph is one sitting. These sittings are that primer. His own commentary, the Dīpikā (दीपिका), is a second book. The paragraphs are numbered in the order he wrote them.

What the primer puts in one place

• Seven padārtha (पदार्थ): substance, quality, action, the common, the particular, inherence, and absence. Paragraph 2 names them. Vaiśeṣika (वैशेषिक) 1.1.4 counts six. Absence is the later seventh, and this primer is where a classroom meets it as a category of its own.
• The primer then counts nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and five actions. The lists are 3, 4, and 5. The definitions follow.
• Four means of knowing: perception, inference, comparison, and word. They are taught inside the quality buddhi (बुद्धि), because a means of knowing is the instrument of a true cognition, and cognition is a quality of the self. Begin that stretch at 34. The four names are the four of Nyāya (न्याय) 1.1.3. The definitions are the later ones.

How the book is laid out

• 1. The opening verse.
• 2 through 9. The seven names, and a first word on each.
• 10 through 18. The nine substances.
• 19 through 33. Color through sound.
• 34 through 65. Cognition, true and otherwise, and the four means. The five failed reasons are 52 through 57.
• 66 through 75. Pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, effort, dharma (धर्म), adharma (अधर्म), and the trace.
• 76 through 81. Action defined, then the common, the particular, inherence, and absence, and the close. 82 is the author's closing verse.

Where to go after it

• Nyāya (न्याय) 1.1.1, the sixteen topics. Then 1.1.3 through 1.1.7, Gautama's own definitions of the four means.
• Vaiśeṣika (वैशेषिक) 1.1.4 and 1.1.5, Kaṇāda (कणाद)'s six.
• The pramāṇas (प्रमाण), where the schools' lists sit side by side. This primer is one of those lists, the later Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (न्याय-वैशेषिक) one.

The electronic file this pāṭha (पाठ) was checked against dropped letters in a few paragraphs. The sittings read nityāḥ (नित्याः) at 11, nityam (नित्यम्) at 12, sparśaḥ (स्पर्शः) at 22, anityam (अनित्यम्) at 23, kālakṛtam (कालकृतम्) at 29, dravatvam (द्रवत्वम्) at 31, dhvanya (ध्वन्य) at 33, niṣprakārakam (निष्प्रकारकम्) and saprakārakam (सप्रकारकम्) at 42, the hearing clause and bhūtalam (भूतलम्) at 43, abhidheyatva (अभिधेयत्व) at 48, yathā (यथा) at 54, sādhanāvyāpakatvam (साधनाव्यापकत्वम्) at 56, gosadṛśam (गोसदृशम्) and utpadyate (उत्पद्यते) at 58, puruṣaḥ (पुरुषः) at 64, and sarveṣām (सर्वेषाम्) at 66 and 67. Each sitting says what the file had written.