Pakshadhara Mishra (also known as Jayadeva), who flourished in the fifteenth century, was the pre-eminent Naiyayika (logician) of his age and the head teacher of Nyaya Shastra in Mithila. A court scholar under King Bhairava Singh of the Oiniwar dynasty, he led a celebrated academy of logic — for generations the most prestigious centre for the study of Navya-Nyaya, the “New Logic” founded by Gangesha Upadhyaya.
His best-known work, the Aloka gloss, made him the towering representative of the Mithila school of Navya-Nyaya. Students travelled from across India to study under him; among them were Vasudeva Sarvabhauma and the famous Raghunatha Shiromani of Bengal, who would carry the tradition to Nabadwip and eventually rival Mithila’s supremacy.
Pakshadhara stands for Mithila at the height of its renown as India’s school of logic — a place to which scholars made pilgrimage to master the most rigorous philosophical method of the medieval world, and whose jealous rules (the legend that no manuscript of logic could leave Mithila) became part of the region’s intellectual lore.
