अतिदेशः — Extension by What Is Said: Analogical Transfer of Rules

Atideśa is "extension": carrying what is established for one matter over to another. Kauṭilya defines it as "establishing by what has been said", with a sentence of legal cross-reference: "the non-delivery of a gift is explained by (the rules on) the recovery of debts." Suśruta defines it as "establishing what is yet to come in the matter at hand", with a prognosis: "since his vāyu rises upward, he will suffer from udāvarta." Cakrapāṇi defines it as the declaration, after some matter has been shown, that "others too are to be understood in the same way", with Caraka's clause by which every unlisted good practice is approved. The same word names one of the great devices of Pāṇini's grammar, the treating of a substitute "like the original" (sthānivat), and one of the great topics of Mīmāṃsā, the transfer of the details of an archetypal rite to its modifications. This article shows that the three tantrayukti definitions describe three directions of one act — the extension of a rule to another topic, of a present sign to a future state, and of a list to cases not listed — and examines three objections: that the definitions are incompatible, that atideśa is only analogy, and that an open-ended clause makes a text indefinite. It concludes that atideśa is the economy of a śāstra, and that its modern forms are the cross-reference, "mutatis mutandis", inheritance in software, and prognosis. Series: तन्त्रयुक्तिविमर्शः · Tantrayukti Studies, TY-2026/11. Loci: AŚ 15.1.23–24; Su. Utt. 65.17. Online version: https://sanskritmanthan.in/a/ty-11-atidesha