Gadadhara Bhattacharya

Gadadhara Bhattacharya was a seventeenth-century Indian logician of the late Navya-Nyaya tradition, born in the village of Lakshmichapda in Bogra district in Bengal, the son of Jivacharya, a follower of tantric practice. He learned Nyaya philosophy from Hariram Tarkavagish, and popular stories survive about the relation between teacher and pupil. He is best known for commentaries on the work of Raghunatha Shiromani, among them the Anumanadidhititika on the theory of inference, the Nanavadavyakhya and the Bauddhadhikaradidhititika, and for partial annotations on the Tattvachintamani and its later commentaries. His commentaries became so central that they are called Gadadhari, and without them the original texts were almost impossible to follow. He is believed to have written about sixty-four further books on logic, of which Shaktivada, Muktivada, Vyutpattivada, Visayatavada and Vidhisvarupa survive. He wrote during the middle of the century, around 1640 to 1660, and his work overshadowed that of the earlier Nyaya scholars Jagadish Tarkalankar and Bhavananda.