Yakṣa and the Birth of Systematic Dialectical Philosophy: Dialectical Naturalism Reconstructed

This paper argues that the Nighaṇṭu-Nirukta represents not merely a philological commentary but the earliest systematic articulation of dialectical naturalism in Indian thought. By reconstructing the implicit logical operators that govern Yakṣa's interpretive practice—polarity (mithuna), conjunction (saṃyoga), generative becoming (bhāvanā), dissolution (nāśa), and cross-scale correspondence (puruṣa-vidhā)—the study demonstrates the presence of a coherent methodological framework underlying the text. These recurrent operations satisfy the minimal criteria of a philosophical school: a determinate method, a stable conceptual grammar, and a distinguishable position within contemporaneous intellectual alternatives. Unlike Aristotelian substance metaphysics, which privileges stable ousia, and unlike the aphoristic dialectics of Heraclitus, Yakṣa's system embeds becoming within a structured interpretive procedure grounded in language, ritual, and natural process. The paper therefore proposes the recognition of a distinct "Dialectical Naturalism" and situates it at the beginning of the long arc of dialectical philosophy.