Because the dominant academic culture in the U.S. traces back to Europe, the ancient Chinese philosophers were not taught to, and thus not read by, the succeeding generations. Ignorance thus apparently justifies ignorance: Because we don’t know their work, they have little impact on our philosophy. Because they have little impact on our philosophy, we believe we are justified in remaining ignorant about their work.

Marcus Arvan also took up the issue again here and made a more inclusive argument in favour of all sorts of non-standard non-Western philosophies.

What do you think? Which arguments are more effective?

from http://www.popsci.com/should-animals-same-rights-people

1. If, in fact, humans have more rights than animals because they are the dominant group, then this resembles very much racism or any other dominion of one group over the other.
2. If, by contrast, humans have more rights than animals because they are different than animals, then what does this difference consist of? If it amounts to rationality, should psychically empaired human beings have no rights?

Since after the end of the Nazi experiments a (more or less) general consensus has been achieved about the fact that psychically empaired human beings deserve the same rights, one is led back either to No. 1 or to a different basis of the human claim for rights. This could be Peter Singer’s claim that one’s moral stand should be calculated not on the basis of one’s ability to reach a soteriological goal or one’s rational value but on the basis of one’s ability of experiencing pain (Singer 1975). This includes psychically empaired human beings. But it also includes at least many animals (one might argue about the fact that many invertebrates with no nerve ganglia cannot literally speaking experience pain).

The discussion about the inclusion of animals within the realm of beings to whom human rights can be ascribed, thus, seems to hit a nerve in Western thought. It seems that no straight line can be legitimately drawn to separate animals and humans and that there is more a net of family resemblances than a straight opposition between the two groups (a dolphin or a gorilla, just to take an obvious example, seem to me to resemble a human being much more than they resemble an amoeba, although all three can be used for the sake of medical research or kept in zoo-like institutions).

The situation is slighly different in other traditions of thought. In Classical Chinese Confucian philosophy, for instance, the idea that we have stronger obligations towards the members of our extended family and towards further “proximate” people is a viable option and one could easily extend this model to animals, so that it would be legitimate to attribute rights first to the members of our families, then to members of our communities, then to further human beings, then to pet-animals, then to further animals with whom we are somehow connected and only at last to further animals. However, this option clashes with the Western ambition of building a universal ethical system, does not it?*

I wrote about Indian reflections on this topic in a forthcoming article (a preliminary draft of which is available here), where I basically argue that most Indian thinkers seem to see non-human and human animals along a hierarchical sequence with no brisk interruption.
Daya Krishna connects this with the utilitaristic approach to knowledge which characterises most Indian explicit reflections about it:

The usual Indian analysis is centered around the hedonistic view of human nature which sees it as naturally seeking pleasure and avoding pain and has a pragmatic view of knowledge which sees the `truth’ of knowledge in terms of its ability to avoid pain and afford pleasure to the humanking. But on this view no distinction is possible between the human and the animal world as the latter also is supposed to seek pleasure or avoid pain and `sees’ the `truth’ of its knowledge in terms of the `success’ achieved by it in this enterprise. In fact, the whole learning theory in modern psychology and the training of animals is based on this premiss (2004, p. 237)

Let me just add that Daya Krishna is thinking of the first aphorism in the foundational text of the Nyāya school (NS 1.1.1), where knowledge is linked to the achievement of one’s summum bonum. In another philosophical school, the Mīmāṃsā, animals are also considered on the same level as humans when it comes to the fact of desiring happiness (PMS chapter 6).

* I am grateful to L.E. for having discussed this topic with me. For a critical discussion of the concept of “rights”, see Amod Lele’s discussion here (and in the previous posts). On why I am citing Daya Krishna, see this post. Within Chinese philosophy, on Confucius vs. Mozi regarding the universality of rights see this post by Eric Schwitzgebel.

Now, I have already commented about it at DailyNous, but the staff of Superscholars has written to me twice to advertise the map, so that I feel compelled to repeat my comment and some further ones here. I would also like to ask readers: Do you think these maps have some use at all? If so, for whom? Beginners or Advanced scholars?

The first problem regards the very scope of the chart, i.e., its being “Eastern”. “Eastern Philosophy” is a geographic abstraction at best unapplicable to philosophy and at worse very misleading —for reasons pointed out by Manyul Im and Malcolm Keating on the DailyNous, i.e., it makes one assume similarities which are not there and overlook similarities between, e.g., the Greek and the Islamic world, which are there.

As for Indian Philosophy, the ancient part is just plainly wrong (see also Malcolm’s comments reproduced here). There is so little to rescue, that it does not make sense even to try. By contrast, the more recent part (on the schools of Vedānta) is still very misleading (what should it mean that in Dvaita “There is a strict distinction between two equally real worlds: one, the Brahman and two individual people”?), but might have some initial value as a draft upon which one should improve.

Since I am not competent enough about Chinese philosophy, let me quote Manyul Im’s aphoristic comment (also from DailyNous):

This may be the worst chart of East Asian philosophy ever. Super Scholar is neither.

On the same website you can find several other comments, ranging from misspelt Chinese characters to misunderstood concepts… Moreover, Tibetan, Japanese and Korean philosophies are altogether absent.

Thus: If you teach an “Eastern Philosophy”, warn your students!

After my last post on the disappearance of Buddhism from South India, I received two emails of readers pointing to the fact that Buddhism must have been prosperous in Tamil Nadu, given that Dharmakīrti himself was born in Tamil Nadu and that the Maṇimēkalai (a Buddhist literary text in Tamil, datable perhaps to the 5th–7th c.) presupposes a Buddhist community and reuses materials from Śaṅkarasvāmin’s Nyāyapraveśa.

In fact, most of us learnt in their early years of study of Classical Indology (broadly construed, so that it should cover the intellectual production of South Asia, from Śrī Laṅkā to Tibet, from Pāli to Sanskrit, Classical Tamil, Classical Tibetan, etc.) that Buddhism had become influential in Tamil Nadu, at least from the time of Amaravati onwards. When one looks closer at the data, however, the findings are less clear.
Concerning the timeline of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu:

• First of all, the findings appear to indicate clearly a decline and then disappearance of Buddhism in the early second millennium AD (see this post).
• I could not find any information concerning clear evidences of an institutional presence of Buddhism before the 4th c. AD. This does not exclude that there might have been people who considered themselves Buddhists, but they did not leave trace of their belief.

Concerning the type of Buddhism,

• Petra Kieffer-Pülz (see her comment here) showed us evidence of the presence of Theravāda Buddhists using Pali as medium in Tamil Nadu from an earlier (perhaps already 3rd c.) until a late age (13th c.). Further evidences about their presence can be found also in Schalk’s work (see the same post).
• Schalk (see the same post) gathered informations regarding syncretic Buddhism.
• The Maṇimēkalai (see above) reuses materials from the early Pramāṇavāda school.

Thus, it lies beyond question that there were Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhists in Tamil Nadu, at least from the 4th c. until their decline in the 12th–13th c.

But what do the Maṇimēkalai and the place of birth of Dharmakīrti (or of Bodhidharma) tell us about the fortune of Pramāṇavāda in Tamil Nadu? Not so much, I think. In fact, even if Dharmakīrti were really born in Tamil Nadu (in order to assert this with safety we should be able to determine that Tibetan historians clearly meant Tamil Nadu when they spoke of, e.g., yul lho phyogs), he left his place of origin very early in his life and does not seem to have left anything comparable to Nalanda in Tamil Nadu.

As for the Maṇimēkalai, the fact that it reuses a relatively easy manual on Buddhist logic does not seem to me to mean anything more than that the Nyāyapraveśa was easy enough to be used by a wide number of readers (and it was in fact used by Jaina and even “Hindu” authors, see Tachikawa 1971).

Once again, I am sorry to admit that I do not read Tamil. Thus, on the Manimekalai I rely entirely on secondary literature (especially Anne Monius, Paula Richman and the contributions in the volume edited by Peter Schalk, A Buddhist woman’s path to enlightenment).

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/10/buddhism-in-tamil-nadu-until-the-end-of-the-first-millennium-ad/feed/ 2 1106 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2014 14:35:20 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1077 When did Buddhism finally disappear from Tamil Nadu? And which kind of Buddhism was active in Tamil Nadu until its disappearance?


I am not an expert on this topic, thus, here I only would like to discuss with readers about what I found out in secondary literature and the seeming problems the secondary literature entails.

• The most comprehensive resource I could locate are the books and articles edited or authored by Peter Schalk, who appears to be the major expert on Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and claims to have examined all possible primary sources on Buddhism in that country. Through a cross-examination of coins, inscriptions, artefacts, texts on Buddhists and texts of Buddhists, Schalk could conclude that “none is before the 4th and none after the 14th century” (Schalk in Deeg et al., 2011, section 8). More in detail, the last Tamiḷ Buddhist document (an inscription displaying a syncretic form of Buddhism and Śaivism, see Āḷvāppiḷḷai Vēluppiḷḷai 2002, section 5.7) is dated to the 13th c.
• Buddhism, was, moreover, never supported by royal patronage in Tamil Nadu, unlike Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and in part also Jainism. Thus, it lacked the protection it could enjoy in other parts of South Asia and in Śrī Laṅkā (Schalk 2011, section 10). This, together with the pressure from Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism are probably the causes of the Buddhist decline described as early as in 600 AD (in the Mattavilāsa prahasana, see Schalk, 2013, p. 30).
• The lack of importance of Buddhism in the intellectual arena of Tamil Nadu is also testified by the fact that Jainas are much more frequently attacked and criticised by Śaiva and Buddhist authors (see Schalk 2013, p. 33).
• In fact, even before the 14th c., Buddhism in Tamil Nadu had evolved into a form of Buddhism-Śaiva syncretism, so that:
  

  This “freedom’s” strenght was also its weakness: without an authoritative textual base it was soon assimilated with Caivam [=Śaivism] and finally eliminated in the 14th century” (2011, section 1).

  This open and syncretic nature of Tamil Buddhism is also evident in the fact that, as shown again by Schalk (2011), it did not possess a proper canon.

• A further interesting resource is Anne Monius’ 2001 book, which focuses on the problems entailed in the study of the Buddhist community in South India through texts which only imagine it, such as the poem Maṇimēkalai. I will not focus on her text here, since my main concern is with a later period (1000-1500).

What else can we say about what Buddhists in Tamil Nadu read or listened to, and believed?

1. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (ca. 602–664) speaks of a large community and that it belonged to the Great Vehicle. However, Schalk convincingly shows that Xuanzang was speaking from hearsay and is not fully reliable (2011, section 11).
2. There is a widespread tradition (of which I could not locate the primary source and I ask for help from learned readers) saying that in 1236 a group of bhikkus from Kañci left for Śrī Laṅkā to re-establish there a Theravāda ordination line.
3. The Jaina Tamil text Nīlakēci seems to target a Abhidharma-like kind of Buddhism (see Āḷvāppiḷḷai Vēluppiḷḷai 2002, section 5.4, especially 5.4.8; for the identification of the Nīlakēci‘s polemical target with Mahāyāna, see Kandaswamy 1999, to which Shalk 2002, section 1.4.2, polemically replies).
4. The vīracōḷiyam treatise (written during the reign of Vīrarājēndracōḷa, 1063–1070, and commented upon in the 12th c.) is a Buddhist text on Grammar. I wonder whether it could be connected to the flourishing of Buddhist Grammars in Pāli countries (see Ruiz-Falqués’ studies thereon, here) or rather only to the Cāndravyākraṇa.

Point No. 2 might seem to slightly clash with the evidence of the Theravāda ordination line in Śrī Laṅkā being re-established by monks from Pagan (Burma). Nonetheless, it is not impossible that the ordination line was interrupted again and one needed again bhikkus from abroad. These bhikkus most probably did not belong to the syncretic Buddhism described above. In fact, Schalk explicitly acknowledges the presence of Pāli ācariyas (ācārya) in Tamil Nadu, although he adds that

We know that they were also endured in Nākapaṭṭiṇam during the Cōḷa period, but they were evidently secluded, because they left no traces in the documents produced by the Cōḷa establishment (Schalk, 2002, section 5.1.1).

Now, a last question: Do you know whether Buddhist texts were preserved in Jaina institutions in Tamil Nadu, as it happened in North India? This could account for the presence of Buddhist texts even when an institutionalised Buddhist community was absent…

If you are wondering why I am interested in the topic, you can read this post of mine on Veṅkaṭanātha’s (Tamil Nadu, 1269–1370) Buddhist quotes.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/feed/ 9 1077 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/29/eaaa-conference-in-olomouc/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/29/eaaa-conference-in-olomouc/#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2014 12:26:40 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1032 I just came back from Olomouc, where I attended the first conference of the European Association of Asian Art and Archaeology. It was my first conference entirely dedicated to Art and I found out some interesting things:

1. Art scholars neither use nor appreciate hand outs (which I had prepared, following a comment here)
2. All art scholars, including the ones who do not discuss works of art, use slides and know how to do it (not too many, not too much text, not too few…), which is something I generally appreciate
3. Unlike scholars of Indian art (who do not generally feel they need to master an Indian language), it seems that many (or most) scholars of Chinese art master Chinese. Zhou Xiangpin even delivered (against expectations) his paper in Chinese language. If this had happened in a conference on Indian art, I imagine that most of the audience would have left, whereas in this case the audience seemed not to be distressed at all

The latter point, together with the presence of many young scholars from China, who probably had their travel financed by their home institutions, made me think a lot about the cultural agenda of the Chinese government. The Indian government seems much less interested in guiding Indological studies. (I can think of many reasons for that, but if you have further ones, please drop a comment below).

As for the contents of the conference, there were several parallel sessions, so that I could only attend some papers. I will dedicate a separate post on the topic of my panel, namely reuse. As for the others, I especially liked:

• Bianca Maria Rinaldi‘s paper on the Western reception of Chinese gardens: Bianca explained how the political attitude towards China modified the way the Western audience reacted to Chinese gardens. China was first presented by 17th–18th c. Jesuits as a model state, in which intellectuals ruled, whereas Europe was ruled by aristocratic feudataries. Chinese gardens were consequently appreciated for their simplicity, opposed to the magnitude of Versailles’ gardens. This meant that Chinese gardens were appreciated and their style was embraced by British planners as an alternative to the French (and Italian) style of gardening. Later on, namely by the end of the 18th c., however, the appreciation of China sinked and its gardens were rather blamed because of their lack of largeness and wide perspective. Bianca clearly explained how the latter was a conscious choice of Chinese gardeners who wanted to create one different scene after the other, highly valueing the surprise they would have generated in the viewers. However, Europeans rather decided to interpret it as a sign of the Chinese’s lack of courage, softness and decadence, with European gardens interpreted as more “adult” ones.



• (Here I am conditioned by my personal interests:) Valdas Jaskūnas’ paper on the influence of the Gurjara-Pratīhara dynasty on the structure and iconography in Early Medieval Vaiṣṇava temples and in the earliest Purāṇas. Valdas follows Ronald Inden’s idea that the Purāṇas were the result of an agency aiming at the creation of empires and consequently interpreted the earliest descriptions of temple-building in the Agni Purāṇa, the Matsya Purāṇa, the Garuḍa Purāṇa and —interestingly— the Hayaśīrṣa Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā. In fact, Vaslav argues, temples with an ambulatory around them constitute a three-level structure, with first the garbhagṛha, then the upper zone, to which only the emperor and his family could access, and then the outer level. Furthermore, the Pratīharas, maintains Vaslav, chose Vaiṣṇavism as a source of legitimation and this is reflected in the icongoraphy of the temple, especially in the dikpālas ‘direction guardians’.

As with previous conferences, this post only reflects my impressions of the conference. All errors (especially in fields I am not a specialist of, such as Chinese art) are entirely mine!
Should you be interested in my remarks on the history of gardens as a mirror of a society’s understanding of “nature”, read this article.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/29/eaaa-conference-in-olomouc/feed/ 1 1032 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/17/philosophers-carnival-167/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/17/philosophers-carnival-167/#respond Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:27:23 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1000 The 167th edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival can be found here! It includes also a post by Eric Schwitzgebel on the unavoidability of studying Chinese philosophy and a post by Amod Lele on the “double standard” we adopt while looking at re-readings of the tradition by contemporary or ancient authors. I am grateful to the compiler of this edition of the Carnival (D. Papineau) and to the readers who signalled these posts. May the discussion of philosophical blogs always be broad enough to reach beyond traditional geographical and disciplinary boundaries!

You can signal your favorite posts of September for the October’s Philosophers’ Carnival here. Don’t forget to include some non-mainstream philosophy in your recommandations!

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/09/17/philosophers-carnival-167/feed/ 0 1000 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/26/third-day-at-the-iabs-franco-on-the-datation-of-dharmakirti-and-some-further-thoughts-on-dharmakirti-dignaga-kumarila/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/26/third-day-at-the-iabs-franco-on-the-datation-of-dharmakirti-and-some-further-thoughts-on-dharmakirti-dignaga-kumarila/#respond Tue, 26 Aug 2014 12:27:25 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=886 The datation of Dharmakīrti is a topic I am not competent enough to speak about, but I will nonetheless try to summarise other people’s arguments.
The departing point is the traditionally accepted date of Dharmakīrti, namely 600–660, settled by Erich Frauwallner mainly on the basis of the reports of Chinese pilgrims, and especially on the fact that Xuanzang did not mention Dharmakīrti. Recently, Helmut Krasser suggested to reconsider the evidences. Xuanzang’s silence, he meant, is not an evidence at all, since it might have well been the case that Dharmakīrti was deliberately ignored in the curricula at Nalanda because of his critical attitude towards the Buddha’s word (which is not in itself an instrument of knowledge according to Dharmakīrti) and that this is the only reason why Xuanzang did not hear about him. As for the pars construens, Krasser suggests that Dharmakīrti must have influenced Bhāviveka (and not the other way round) and that this influence is recognizable in several topics, e.g., in the increased importance of the topic of omniscience and in the so-called sattvānumāna. Thus, Dharmakīrti must have lived well before the commonly acknowledged date.

During Vincent Eltschinger’s Habilitation’s Defence and now at the IABS the topic has been resumed by Eli Franco (Birgit Kellner, Patrick McAllister, Ernst Steinkellner and others have also taken part to the discussion). Franco’s pars destruens regarded the fact that one finds evidences of the Buddha’s omniscience as a distinct philosophical topic already in the Spitzer Manuscript and that the topic has, thus, not been introduced by Dharmakīrti in the Indian debate. As for the sattvānumāna, Franco contends that its formulation by Dharmakīrti and by Bhāviveka is completeley different and that the only common element, namely sattva as a probans is already found in Uddyotakara. McAllister has suggested during the discussion and “on behalf of Helmut” that the inferences are not that different. They are applied to a different locus (pakṣa), but their probans (namely, anityatva in Bhāviveka and kṣaṇikatva in Dharmakīrti) could be the same. In fact, after Dharmakīrti anityatva is considered to be the same as kṣaṇikatva, so that if Bhāviveka lived before Dharmakīrti, the inferences would be different, whereas if he lived after him, they would be equivalent.
Long story short, according to Franco, the similarities between Bhaviveka and Dharmakīrti are far too vague and general: they could have been “ideas in the air”, rather than precise references. And even if there were direct correspondences, there can still have been a third source. We cannot assume that what we have was actually all that there was. In this connection, Birgit Kellner has pointed out the fact that there is no reason to believe that what we have is all that was circulating at that time. If I (EF) am allowed to step in, this is in my opinion an important thing to be kept in mind while looking for the source of an innovative element in an author’s thought (as paradigmatically done by Erich Frauwallner in his attempt to reconstruct the history of Indian philospohy). An example is the case of the development of Kumārila’s thought from vyāpti to niyama discussed here, but the general point regards the fact that while looking for a source, we are left with far too few candidates.

As for the pars construens of his argument, Franco stressed the silence by Xuanzang, that by Candrakīrti and then silence of Jain authors. The first Jain who refers to Dharmakīrti is in fact Akalaṅka (720–780). All of that has been explained by Krasser as the result of the suppression of Dharmakīrti’s thought from the curricula at Nalanda. But, Franco noticed, we have no evidence neither of this suppression, nor of the later rediscovery of Dharmakīrti in Nalanda. Ernst Steinkellner observed in this connection that curricula are, even nowadays, slow to be updated and Dharmakīrti’s thought was very complex. It might thus be that he could find his place in the curricula only after a generation of commentaries which had clarified his innovations (incidentally, this “softer” explanation is not what Krasser had thought and claimed to have been the case).

A last point: Moving Dharmakīrti back would have a great impact on the chronology of Indian philosophy. For instance, we now know more or less for sure that Dharmakīrti influenced Kumārila, who was influenced by Dignāga. Establishing independently Kumārila’s date would thus lead one to important conclusions regarding Dharmakīrti’s date, too (and vice versa).

For further thoughts on Bhāviveka and Dharmakīrti’s dates and relation, see this post. For some elements towards a date of Kumārila, see this post. This post is a part of a series on the IABS. For the others, see here. Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers’ ones.
Full disclosure: I might be implicitly biased in favour of Helmut Krasser, because he was a friend, my former boss and because he is no longer there to defend himself.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/26/third-day-at-the-iabs-franco-on-the-datation-of-dharmakirti-and-some-further-thoughts-on-dharmakirti-dignaga-kumarila/feed/ 0 886 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/23/third-and-forth-day-at-the-iabs-pramana-across-asia-introduction-to-the-panel-katsura-lusthaus/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/23/third-and-forth-day-at-the-iabs-pramana-across-asia-introduction-to-the-panel-katsura-lusthaus/#comments Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:50:45 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=856 The “Pramana across Asia” panel has been opened by Eli Franco, its convener, with the following hope: “In some years, through stimuli such as this panel, we will speak of Indo-Sinic Buddhism, just like we speak of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism”.
• In fact, the first speaker, Shoryu Katsura, has focused on the Fangbianxinlun, attributed to Nagarjuna.
  The Fangbianxinlun (together with a text attributed to Vasubandhu) has been one of the two only texts on logic until Xuanzang introduced Dignaga’s New Buddhist Logic.

  The Fangbianxinlun is the Chinese translation of a no longer extant text whose title has been rendered as *Upayahrdaya (Tucci) or *Prayogasara (Frauwallner). After proposing a third alternative, namey *Prayogahrdaya, Katsura has shown that the first Chinese character is used only twice in the text itself, once with the meaning of upaya and the second time with the meaning of prayoga ‘formal representation of a syllogism’, so that we have no way to settle the issue. As for the authorship, due to the usage of dilemmas and prasanga-argumentation, Katsura agrees with the attribution to Nagarjuna or to his school.
  At the very beginning of the text, an objector states that people engage in debate because they are motivated by arrogance and hatred, so that it is better to avoid debates altogether. The author justifies himself by saying that he is only explaining the rules of debate because he needs to protect the truth of the Buddha’s teaching (cf. the similar arguments about jati and vitanda, which should have the same protective function, in the Nyayasutra), and not out of personal pride.

  As for its significance for the purpose of reconstructing the history of Indian philosophy, the Fangbianxinlun (henceforth *UH) encompasses 8 topics, which remind one of the 8 sadhanas in the Hetuvidya section of the Yogacarabhumi. There are also correspondences with the 44 elements of debate mentioned in the Carakasamhita. The *UH recognises 4 pramanas (pratyaksa, anumana —said to be purvavat, sesavat and samanyatodrsta— sabda/aptagama and upamana). In a list of schools, Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools are mentioned, and among the latter are Vaisesikas and Jains. Katsura has suggested that the omission of Nyaya might mean that the text predates the Nyayasutra.
  In this regard, Birgit Kellner has suggested that the absence of the Nyayasutra does not mean that there was no Nyaya school. According to Franco, the final redation of the NS occurred short before Vatsyayana, in the first half of the 5th c.

  Long story short, Katsura’s talk nicely served the panel’s purpose of creating a common field of Indo-Sinic Buddhist studies.

• The same applies to Dan Lusthaus’ talk (on Friday morning), which was dedicated to the Chinese versions of Dharmapala’s commentary on the Alambanapariksa, and to the general topic of the presence of a Hetuvidya tradition in China which is independent of Dharmakirti (“as if there were a tradition of Greek Philosophy influenced by Plato but which has never known Aristotle”, Franco summarised).

Are times ripe for “Indo-Sinic Buddhism”? What are we expecting from this field of study?

This post is a part of a series on the IABS. For its first day, see here. For the first part of the second day, see here. For the second part of the second day, see here. For the third part of the second day, see here. Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers’ ones

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/08/23/third-and-forth-day-at-the-iabs-pramana-across-asia-introduction-to-the-panel-katsura-lusthaus/feed/ 1 856 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/01/08/english-phd-program-in-chinese-philosophy/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/01/08/english-phd-program-in-chinese-philosophy/#comments Wed, 08 Jan 2014 07:26:37 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=373 Are you working on Chinese Philosophy or willing to work on it? It seems to be a good idea, better (unfortunately) than just specializing on Indian Philosophy.

Here is just one more opportunity for PhD scholarships (in China, but with classes taught in English and, thus, international students). Visiting students who only want to spend one year in China are also welcome.

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