ABSTRACT Scholars of rhetoric have long held that there is such a thing as a “rhetorical tradition” and that that tradition began within the context of ancient Athenian democracy. Recently this tradition has been expanded to “traditions” that include “non-Western” approaches. Scholars of democracy have similarly dislodged the notion that democracy, broadly understood, developed only in ancient Greece. This essay expands our understanding of both rhetorical traditions and their relation to democracy by studying the interrelation of rhetorical and deliberative practices found in the history of India. Specifically, it explores how one highly influential school of Indian deliberation, Nyaya, grew alongside practices of public reasoning and self-rule in the gaṇa/saṁgha (so-called ancient Indian “republics”), revealing a similar, but unique, impulse to rhetoric beyond the Athenian/Western context. From this study we also gain insight into the current struggle for democracy worldwide.

Sally Miller Gearhart’s 1979 remark that “any intent to persuade is an act of violence” based in “conversion/conquest” argumentation2, led many feminists, in the eighties and nineties, to describe more cooperative alternative models of academic argument. However, their critiques and suggestions had little field impact, largely due to negative reactions in relevant journals. The polarized reactions, typical of what Deborah Tannen calls our “Argument Culture,” resulted in dismissive and condemnatory rhetoric, and fruitful ideas were lost. This essay suggests that an alternate multivalent or “fuzzy” rhetoric would have proved a more positive environment for the new ideas, and describes how rhetorical studies might use this rhetoric to change the ways we respond to and teach persuasion and argumentation.

Over 2,500 years, philosophers in India refined a truth-centered and rhetorically egalitarian method of analogical debate: Nyāya vāda, and its five-part expression, the “Nyāya method.” According to Indian tradition, its practices emerged in the context of inter-scholar debates. However, most historical examples of Indian debate occur in mythical/religious dialogues between teacher and student, and currently Nyāya's scholars focus on theory, neglecting social practice. While Indologists describe the “what” of Nyāya, their bias toward theory leaves its conversational uses unexplored. Comparative rhetoricians describe Indian rhetoric with Greek terminologies as points of reference, and miss Nyāya's theoretical and practical debate tradition. This essay addresses this lack of social context and paucity of representation of Nyāya. It shows how informal debates in ancient literary/historical dialogues presage Nyāya's formulation and traces Nyāya's use in contemporary public examples, illustrating its rhetorical journey from discussions of scholars and kings, to academic formulization, to popular dialogic expression. Nyāya offers a clear alternative to Western confrontational rhetoric, and the presence of Indian “rhetorical” practice and theory undermines assumptions about “rhetoric” being uniquely Greek in origin, underscoring the need for comparative rhetorics.

Rhetorical patterns used by Westerners may differ from those of other cultures. Still, little is known about Nyāya, India's rhetorical methodology. This essay relates rhetorical patterns in Aristotle's enthymeme and paradeigma to Nyāya's pratijñāa (claim/promise), hetu (reason), and dṛṣṭānta (example). Though superficially similar, the Greek/Western rhetorical patterns invoke interlocking statements based in a general statement, while the Indian approach uses a dominant analogical image to connect claim and reason. Focusing on a historical interaction where a Westerner missed key elements of Indian persuasion because of his Aristotelian presuppositions about argument, the essay illustrates the crucial need to understand differing rhetorical patterns for successful cultural dialogue.

Rhetorical patterns used by Westerners may differ from those of other cultures. Still, little is known about Nyāya, India’s rhetorical methodology. This essay relates rhetorical patterns in Aristotle’s enthymeme and paradeigma to Nyāya’s pratijñā (claim/promise), hetu (reason), and dṛṣṭāntn (example). Though superficially similar, the Greek/Western rhetorical patterns invoke interlocking statements based in a general statement, while the Indian approach uses a dominant analogical image to connect claim and reason. Focusing on a historical interaction where a Westerner missed key elements of Indian persuasion because of his Aristotelian presuppositions about argument, the essay illustrates the crucial need to understand differing rhetorical patterns for successful cultural dialogue.

As Aristotle began to codify rhetorical practices in Greece, a theoretical and pragmatic text on argument, the Nyaya Sutra, emerged in Ancient India, founding one of six key philosophies of India. Though it describes in detail a procedure of reasoning based on a five-part method of dialogic presentation, the rhetorical emphases of the Nyaya approach have been mostly overlooked. This essay proposes Nyaya's inclusion in the field of rhetorical studies, exploring its methods within their historical context, comparing its approach to the traditional logical syllogism, and relating it to the contemporary perspectives of Stephen Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Chaïm Perelman.

Abstract Ancient India formalized rhetorical debate in the Sanskrit Nyāya Sūtras. Still influential, they remain relatively unknown because India is thought more mystical than logical, because Nyāya has been misinterpreted through Greek logic and terminologies, and because of its epistemology and soteriology. Perrett's four Western “approaches” to India—“magisterial,” “exoticist,” “curatorial,” and “interlocutory”—provide perspective. Magisterial blindness and exoticist assumptions prohibit understanding of Nyāya and delay its inclusion in rhetorical studies. A curatorial/interlocutory approach (translation and elucidation) reveals Nyāya's nature, as well as its similarities with Aristotle's enthymeme and example, enriching our understanding of the history and nature of rhetoric.