---
type: Reference
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: nyaya-bhashya
title: Nyāya Bhāṣya (Vātsyāyana)
description: Vātsyāyana's commentary on the Nyāya Sūtra, the earliest surviving Bhāṣya, which fixed the classical readings of perception, inference, testimony, the self, and the theory of error for the whole tradition.
tags:
- reference
- nyaya-bhashya
- vatsyayana
- commentary
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Nyāya Bhāṣya (Vātsyāyana)

The Nyāya Bhāṣya of Vātsyāyana (Pakṣilasvāmin, c. 5th century CE) is the earliest extant commentary on the Nyāya Sūtra and the text through which the sūtras were classically read. It elaborates sense-object contact (sannikarṣa) and the two phases of perception, the gavaya illustration of upamāna, the grounding of testimony in a reliable speaker (āpta), the inference of the enduring self against the Buddhist bundle-view, and the analysis of illusion (anyathā-khyāti). Its readings became the baseline that Uddyotakara's Nyāyavārttika defended against Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. This bundle cites the Bhāṣya wherever a classical reading of a sūtra, rather than the bare sūtra, carries the doctrinal point.
