Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines the means of valid knowledge (Sanskrit pramāṇas) according to Bhadanta Nāgārjuna’s Rasavaiśeṣikasūtra (4,70), an ancient Āyurvedic work (fourth-fifth centuries CE?), and its commentary by Narasiṃha (seventh-eighth centuries CE?). This theoretical treatise of medical philosophy on “the specifics of taste(s)” is, together with its bhāṣya, preserved in a single old palm-leaf manuscript from Kerala, an edition of which was published in print for the first time in Trivandrum in 1928. Both the sūtra-author and the commentator appear to have been Buddhist physicians. Following the sūtra, the pramāṇas are six, viz. perception (pratyakṣa), inference (anumāna), comparison (upamāna), tradition (āgama), implication (arthāpatti) and inclusion (saṃbhava). These are the same as in the Mīmāṃsā tradition except for the sixth. Quoted and parallel passages for this portion of Narasiṃha’s commentary are found in the works of the Buddhist logician Dignāga and in Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā (commenting Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikās), as well as in the Carakasaṃhitā, the Nyāyabhāṣya, the Yuktidīpikā and other early commentaries to the Sāṃkhyakārikās 4-5, and in Vyāsa’s bhāṣya to the Yogasūtras (or Pātañjalayogaśāstra) 1,7. The examples provided for each pramāṇa are connected to medicine. Even if the same examples are commonly found in other epistemological, non-medical, sources, this feature is noteworthy and can be viewed as an indication of the milieu in which the pramāṇa theory originated or, at least, was used in a practical way. The interest of the commentary to RVS 4,70 and 3,44-45 also lies in its scientific approach to medical diagnostics and treatment, stressing observation and logical reasoning, and explaining, as in Carakasaṃhitā 3,4.5 (cf. 8.83), that traditional doctrine, which comes first as a means of knowledge, is itself ultimately based on perception and inference, what in modern times could be termed “empiricism”.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.031 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.079 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".