Udayana

Udayana, also known as Udayanacharya, lived circa 975 to 1050 CE and was an Indian philosopher and logician of the tenth century Nyaya school who attempted to devise a rational theology proving the existence of God through logic, countering the attack on God's existence mounted by Buddhist philosophers such as Dharmakirti and Jnanasri and by the Indian materialist school Charvaka; he is considered the most important philosopher of the Nyaya tradition. He worked to reconcile the views held by the two major schools of logic, Nyaya and Vaisheshika, which became the root of the Navya-Nyaya, or New Nyaya, school of the thirteenth century established by the Gangesha Upadhyaya school of right reasoning, still recognized and followed in some regions of India today; he lived in Kariyan village in Mithila, near present-day Samastipur in Bihar state, India. Udayana wrote a sub-gloss on Vachaspati Misra's work called the Nyaya-vaartika-taatparya-tiikaa-parishuddhi, and several other works including the Kusumanjali, Atma-tattva-viveka, Kiranaavali and Nyaya-parishishhta, also called Bodha siddhi or Bodha shuddhi; he is credited by Naiyayikas with having finally demolished the claims of the Buddhist logicians, and all his known works are thought to have been preserved, attesting to the importance given him in Indian philosophy.