1. Kumārila stating in the ātmavāda chapter within his ŚV that we can directly grasp the self through our awareness of ourselves as an I (via ahampratyaya)
2. Kumārila stating, against Dignāga, that cognitions are not transparent to themselves (see ŚV pratyakṣa 79, 134 and then ŚV śūnyavāda) and that they are rather known a posteriori through arthāpatti based on the fact that something, e.g., a pot, has now the characteristic of being manifest (jñātatā or prākaṭya, see ŚV pratyakṣa 56) and that this characteristic wold be unexplainable otherwise
3. Kumārila stating in the pratyakṣa chapter within the ŚV that perception is sense-perception

Which sort of cognition is ahampratyaya? The “I” cannot be known through cognitions’ awareness of themselves (as in Prabhākara), because of No. 2. Nor can the “I” be known through perception, because of No. 3. Again, given that there must be a solution (the point is too striking to have been missed by Kumārila himself) and that No. 2 looks quite sure, let me try to explore No. 3. Could it be that Kumārila accepts perception as sense-perception AND ahampratyaya? (In this connection, please note that also Jhā writes that “the notion of “I” […] is directly perceptible by the Senses”, fn on ŚV ātmavāda v. 107).

The relevant verses in the chapter on perception are mainly addressed against upholders of yogic perception. Kumārila insists there that perception is about present contents, and the “I” would qualify. He also says that perception arises from a contact between the object and the sense-faculty (sati indriyasaṅgame […] tasya (=pratyakṣasya) evaṃdharmakatvataḥ, vv 17–18), thus excluding svasaṃvedana or other forms of non-sensory direct perception from pratyakṣa. Still, ahampratyaya could qualify as belonging to perception. The sense-faculty at stake in the case of the “I” could be manas, the inner sense faculty. It is in this sense somehow disappointing that Kumārila does not mention the case of ahampratyaya while discussing ātman-manas contact in ŚV pratyakṣa, v. 66. Moreover, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 83 discusses the apprehension of pleasure and pain via manas, but does not mention the case of the manas also cognising the “I”. Even more relevant, v.83 follows a discussion of how a cognition cannot grasp itself and how pleasure etc. can be an exception because there is no svasaṃvedana there, but rather the apprehension of something inhering in the self, via the manas (see Pārthasārathi thereon: manaḥsañjñakenendriyeṇa saṃyuktaḥ ātmā svasamavetān sukhādīn […] pratipadyate). If we were to apply the same scheme to ahampratyaya, we would need to say that the self, connected to the manas, grasps the self itself, which seems to contradict the point made in v. 82, against reflectivity. Also disappointing in this regard are ŚV pratyakṣa, vv. 134–139, that discuss the role of manas in svasaṃvitti (refuted by Kumārila) and pleasure etc. (accepted) and never mention the case of “I-cognitions”. Then, again, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 160 states that manas can work on its own, without an external object, but only cites pleasure and pain as an example (yathā hi manasaḥ sārdhaṃ rūpādau cakṣurādinā | pravṛttiḥ sukhaduḥkhādau kevalasyaiva dṛśyate ||). Same with ŚV śabdanityatādhikaraṇa 337 on manas grasping pleasure etc. when not connected with the external senses.
This is all not conclusive, but it is disheartening that Kumārila never mentions the case of ahampratyaya in the chapter on perception, if ahampratyaya is in fact a case of perception.

At this point I might have been too negative about the possibility of ahampratyaya being a case of perception. Let me therefore look at the evidence in favour of it. The main one is that ahampratyaya is mentioned as an evidence for the existence of the self and as being different than inference in ŚV ātmavāda v. 107. Next, ahampratyaya is discussed in conjunction with recognition (pratyabhijñā) in the same chapter (v. 109, v. 137), and we know that recognition is a combination of memory and perception.

Could it be that ahampratyaya is just a case of recognition? In favour of this view run a few passages in Pārthasārathi’s commentary, where he says pratyabhijñārūpeṇa ahampratyayena (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 109) and ekasantānasambandhino ‘hampratyayā ekajñātṛviṣayā iti pratyabhijñeti (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 139), as well as the fact that the self is proven to exist because of phenomena like desire, which need some extension through time (perception of X, memory that X in the past produced pleasure, desire of X, see vv. 104–105). However, recognition requires a preceding (perceptual) awareness (and Kumārila has already established that inference does not establish the ātman). How could one re-cognise something if one had not cognised it in the first place? Recognition is essential in the argumentative structure of ŚV ātmavāda, because this has as its main opponent the Buddhist epistemologists’ point of view on the self being momentary. Yet, it would be strange to claim that ahampratyaya is only a recognition, since this would deny the phenomenological appeal that we recognise ourselves qua-I immediately (not inferentially, as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas would like it to be, see vv. 92–101).

At this point I wonder whether for Kumārila ahampratyaya is an ad hoc pramāṇa, a cognition that never ceases every time one cognises something (see ŚV ātmavāda 133), but different than the arthāpatti through which one knows a posteriori that a cognition has taken place. Now, against that runs Kumārila’s mention of six pramāṇas (e.g., ŚV codanā 111cd), which seem to either point to ahampratyaya as a subspecies within one of the main sources of knowledge or to ahampratyaya as not necessarily knowledge-conducive. Could be just a cognition (jñāna), one that is not necessarily true, but that remains valid as long as it is not falsified? However, a pramāṇa is in Kumārila exactly defined as something that remains valid as long as it is not falsified. That is, in Nyāya it is easy to distinguish pramāṇas from thinking processes that are not *necessarily* knowledge-conducive although they might lead to true cognitions, such as tarka. But this distinction does not seem to be available to Kumārila’s falsificationism. He does use the term pramāṇa also for sources other than the six (pratyakṣa, anumāna, śabda, upamāna, arthāpatti, abhāva), for instance in the case of pratyabhijñā and of the hermeneutic pramāṇas, but both can be reduced to a subspecies of one of the six pramāṇas. This all would lead one back to ahampratyaya being a form of manas-pratyakṣa, with the ātman featuring both as the subject and object thereof.

ŚV ātmavāda 142 seems to offer a slightly different point of view, with the ātman being described as self-luminous (through the simile of a light, jyotiḥ). Thus, even though Kumārila refutes (see point No. 2 above) self-luminosity in the case of cognitions, he seems to accept it for the self. The next verses explains that this does not apply to other people’s selves, that need to be known through inference (v. 145) and perhaps also through analogy and linguistic communication combined (v. 144). Unfortunately, Uṃveka’s commentary is not available for this chapter and Pārthsārathi does not add much to this short section.

By the way, one might wonder whether ahampratyaya could ever count as knowledge, given that it is unfalsifiable. However,
a. Kumārila has defeated the alternatives already (mainly bhūtacaitanyavāda, or physicalism and the non-physicalist illusionism of Buddhist epistemologists)
b. Kumārila showed at least in one case that he is comfortable with an unfalsifiable knowledge, namely the Veda.

There is a time within Sanskrit philosophy, approximately around 500 to 1000 CE, without which all later discussions do not make sense (whereas one can understand later discussions without referring to, e.g., the Brāhmaṇas, the Pāli canon etc.).
I am thinking of this core of Sanskrit philosophy as the period of time in which philosophers interacted with each other in a dialectical way, learning from each other and being compelled by each other’s points. In other words, as the time in which philosophy was constrained by the need to give reasons for each claim. In this sense, I am not focusing on the Pāli Canon or on the Upaniṣads.

At the core of this period lies the interaction between three schools, namely Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Buddhist epistemological school. No matter the topic, the interaction among these three is always at the center and always needs to be taken into account. According to the various topics, further schools might need to be taken into account. For instance, discussions about atomism will need to take into account the Vaiśeṣika school, discussions about language need to take into account the Vyākaraṇa school.

At the center of this core moment are discussions about epistemology and philosophy of language. It is interesting to note that ontology does not necessarily logically precede epistemology and that the opposite can be the case, especially in the case of Mīmāṃsā. This is particularly evident in the case of discussions about prāmāṇya `validity’.

Sanskrit philosophy developed through debates among thinkers commenting and responding to each other. In this way, they showed that ‘novelty’ is overestimated as a criterion to assess philosophical value and its consistent presence among the criteria reviewers of grants and projects are asked to assess is more the result of a fashion than of inner-philosophical reasons.

This does not mean that individual authors did not deliver substantial contribution to philosophy. Philosophy develops through its history and its history is made by individual thinkers. Nonetheless, these individual thinkers contribute under the garb of a school, downplaying their disagreements with their predecessors and often enveloping them within a commentary on a predecessor’s text, which is meant not just to explain it, but also to enfold all its potential meaning. Some scholars did move from one school to the other (e.g., possibly Vasubandhu or Maṇḍana), others just introduced in one school the elements of the other school they more strongly agreed with (e.g., Jayanta).

Key authors to be kept in mind:
• Dignāga (Buddhist epistemological school), introduced the threefold check, later accepted by all thinkers
• Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā), introduced the concept of intrinsic validity, explained that cognitions are not self-aware, challenged the Dignāga framework, systematised the discussions about absence and the other sources of knowledge (found already in his predecessor, Śabara).
• Dharmakīrti (Buddhist epistemological school), younger contemporary of Kumārila, adjusted the apoha theory and several other epistemological points in the light of Kumārila’s cricitism.
• Jayanta (Nyāya), modified the Nyāya epistemology in the light of Kumārila’s criticism, explained that cognitions are intrinsically doubtful, unless proven right, but that this does not lead to a paralysis, because one can act based on doubt.

The following elements had been discussed at the round table after the panel on reuse (about which see this announcement and these comments right at the end of it) at the IABS conference:

• genre: it seems that philosophy is a special case, in which literality of quotations is especially evaluated, whereas commentaries on religious texts are mid-way (as shown by Jowita Kramer) and religious and ritual texts reuse more freely (as shown by Cathy Cantwell). Petra Kieffer-Pülz observed that genre plays no role in Pāli literature (whereas time does, see immediately below). Paul Hackett noticed that within tantric literature of all religious trends, reuse is so extensive, that even chapters’ numbers which make no sense in the new environment may be copied.
• authorship: unexpectedly, even a strong concept of authorship, as the one common in kāvya does not prevent a free reuse, since the readership still regards authored texts as it regards other kind of texts (as shown by Camillo Formigatti using the example of the avadāna-collections)
• time: surprisingly enough, Petra Kieffer-Pülz’ findings concerning Pāli harmonise with my own ones on Sanskrit and confirm that after a certain century, authors tend to be much more specific as for their sources, explicitly mentioning author’s and work’s names. When does this change take place? Petra suggested “after the 14th c.” in Pāli literature. I would say even before that in Sanskrit literature, that is, around the 11th c. (see however below, fn *, for the proposal that the turn can be traced back already to Dignāga). Further views on this topic: Philipp Maas noted that Vācaspati, in his commentary on the Yogaśāstra clearly feels the need to name his sources, sometimes by inventing names if he does not know them. Referring to an even earlier date, Charles DiSimone noted that Śāntideva quotes up to five authorities on the same topic (thus showing that “name dropping” was important, I would say).

This leads to some further important points, namely:

• reasons for not naming one’s sources: Petra Kieffer-Pülz preliminarly observed that the lack of naming one’s sources cannot be interpreted as due to the reliance on oral instructions, since in the Pāli milieu books were indeed used and there are even records of libraries. Cristina Pecchia noted that Dharmakīrti is consistently referred to as ācārya among his commentators and that the main authors would have been immediately present to their relevant audience. Another person (unknown to me, unfortunately, but if you recognise yourself, please add a comment below) highlighted the fact that we must imagine that there was a shared repertoire, especially in the case of texts to be performed (once the performative stage was ended, one needed to fill the names, etc.). Cathy Cantwell, last, observed that no naming of the source is needed if the text has the status of a revelation, nor if it is reused almost unconsciously, since it has become a part of oneself, after having memorised it at a very early age. This last comment fits with my own findings regarding the fact that one does not name authors in one’s own school (see my Introduction in the special issue of the JIPh I edited).
• “Forge” of textual material: This topic has been dealt with in connection with Madhva (see Mesquita’s books on this topic) and with the extraordinary fact that some authors felt the need to forge new quotes instead of using the well-accepted device of over-interpreting extant ones. It is interesting to note that, as observed by Petra Kieffer-Pülz, already in the Aṭṭhakathā literature there are accusations to people who would have “forged” sentences. A further interesting indication of the awareness that forgery was not admitted is the justification of new Buddhist rules or part of rules by attributing them to the Buddha and (implicitly?) saying that ‘Had the Buddha been alive, he would have said that’. UPDATE: This point is discussed in Kieffer-Pülz’ book Verlorene Gaṇṭhipadas, Vol. I, p. 252 and pp. 490–492 (thanks to Petra for pointing it out!).

Can you think of further elements you would take into account? Further applications of the elements we highlighted? For instance, we did not have time to discuss about geographic differences, nor about the impact of multilinguism (which had been dealt with by Charles DiSimone in his talk) on the accuracy of textual reuse.

*Kiyotaka Yoshimizu has kindly reminded me of an article by Larry McCrea in this volume) on how Dignāga’s way of referring literally to his opponents has changed at once the Indian way of doing philosophy and of engaging with one’s opponents. Could Dignāga be the source of such later developments?

For my first post on the same round table, see here. For the complete series of posts on the IABS, see here. Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers’ ones.

I cannot help but enjoying papers dealing with Mīmāṃsā (especially if from a philosophical viewpoint, as it happened during the last IABS), they are just more interesting to me, but I asked friends and colleagues to forget about their personal interests and to tell me which papers of the IABS and IDhC they enjoyed more and why. The following ones are the results I collected.

Chao-jung Ching, Secular Uses of Writing in Buddhist Monasteries in Kucha: not particularly critical, but one learns a lot through it, especially about Khotanese.

Brendan Gillon: interesting, “but most of all for his wonderful voice”, which can be followed also by non-native speakers (and if you think that this is not important, remember that English native speakers were a tiny minority at these conferences).

Natalie Gummer, Jan Nattier and Luis O. Gomez, i.e., the whole panel on Theories and Methods in the Tranlations of Mahāyāna Sūtras, “because they were good presented, but even more because they made me reflect about my own translations”.

Huanhuan He (with Leonard van der Kuijp), Turning the Wheels: Yet another look at the *Hetucakra[-ḍamaru]: “Though the idea itself had already been noticed and explained by another scholar many years ago without evoking attention in the international academic world, Huanhuan He elucidated how in his Hetucakra Dignāga figures out a good way to make beginners versed in his system of logic, in addition to philological remarks on the text. In her slides, she figured two concentric circles, one for the hetu’s distributions in sapakṣas, the other for that in vipakṣas, and she rotated the two circles round and round like a ḍamaru-drum. It was really funny and impressive in giving a new insight into the well-known text”.

Gergely Hidas, A Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha Manuscript at the Cambridge University Library: He was able to start from the particular and reach to the most general implications.

Karin Lang: clear, well-explained, good balance between speaking and slides. Perfect voice-speed.

Joseph Marino, Two Gāndhārī Saṃyuktāgama Sūtras of the Senior Collection: he spoke about the city as metaphor for nirvana, for the praxis and for the body of the practicant within Buddhism. Apparently a “hit” of the paper has been the explanation of why cities should not have holes in the walls which could have allowed cats to get in (in fact, ennemies used to set the tails of pets on fire in order to put fire on their households and, thus, on the whole city). (this paper is the one which has been recommended to me by the highest number of people)

Patrick McAllister: A bit imprecise, but one could feel that he cared about what he was saying.

Hiroshi Nemoto: Because he focused on a challenging topic, namely on how can bodhi be permanent, although the entire Buddhist worldview focuses on the general impermanence of all phenomena.

Alexander von Rospatt: informative and clear.

Ryo Sasaki: “a very interesting talk about the early debate tradition, and the different types of debate that can be found mentioned in Buddhist texts.” It “got me thinking about the relationship between these types of debates and the various classifications of dialogues that are found in contemporary formal argumentation research”

Mark Siderits: clear, perceptive, insightful.

Sara Uckelman: very interesting, “although she is not primarily an Indologist…or perhaps because she is not primarily an Indologist”.

Apparently easier was the list of what we did not like, i.e.:

1. Speakers who speak as if they were vacuum-cleaner-sellers
2. Speakers presenting their projects as if they were trying to “sell” them
3. Speakers presenting their IT projects and explaining only their technical strenghts, with no reflection on which methodological choice they presuppose and which new critical questions they enable, as if they were an end in themselves
4. Speakers presenting their IT projects without explaining which software or which encoding system they were using, but rather just explaining how the interface works
5. Speakers distributing no handouts: for it is difficult to conceive questions if you have no written basis helping your reflections
6. Speakers focusing on too narrow issue (at the IDhC).
7. Speakers not respecting their time allotment: it is just disrespectful for others
8. Speakers recycling the same paper (or at least the same slides) from the IABS to the IDhC
9. Panels made of people who were not really experts in the field or did not really care about it
10. Papers ignoring fundamental articles directly related to their topic
11. Speakers speaking quickly and “as they were speaking to themselves”

I was striken by No. 5 (since I basically stopped distributing handouts several years back, thinking that they were just distracting. What do you think? Do you read hand outs? And when?
I also need to add something about No. 10. It has been applied to a person who really ignored a fundamental work dealing with his or her topic. Do not take it too strictly, or you will be stop attending conferences altogether.
As for No. 11, you can easily guess that, as a non-English native speaker, I deeply sympathise with the importance of speaking clearly.

You can find my summaries of some IABS papers here. Two IDhC papers are discussed here (Yoshimizu), and here and here (Kataoka). Should you wonder about many absences, please remember that I asked my friends and colleagues, who all are too nice to mention themselves or their close friends.

A summary of likes and dislikes of my readers and colleagues can be read here (don’t forget to add your own favs).

• is the example of the presence of horns as leading to “non-horse” an instance of the way apoha works (as with Yoshimizu, which supports in this way his analysis of Dignāga’s procedure as entailing a compositional analysis) or just an example about an inference, which works in a way similar as the apoha, i.e., does not need to exclude elements one by one (as with Kataoka, who thus supports his claim that Dignāga does not need any positive postulation).

More details on each reconstruction can be found below:

Pramāṇasamuccaya and svavṛtti 5.43 (Pind’s reconstruction)

yac coktam <ādyapratyayo> nāstīti, iṣṭisiddhir anāditvāt. [43a]

[…]. yasya tu […] na ca śakyaṃ jātimad vyāptum, na ca […]. yad apy uktaṃ pratyayavṛttir eva nāsti, tad apy ayuktam.

sāmānyena nirākṛteḥ. [43b]

na hi so ’nyāṃ jātiṃ pratidravyam apohate, kiṃ tarhi vyavacchedyavivakṣayaikena sāmānyadharmeṇa. uktaṃ cātra vijātīye ’darśanamātreṇānumānam. tavaiva tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyānantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvādarśanena tadvyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>. tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

Kataoka

tavaiva tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyānantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvādarśanena tad- vyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>. tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

NB: yathā connected with tathā: like it works in the case of inference, so here. Thus, yathā only introduces a diverging example, namely one about inference. atra means “like in the case of inference, so in our case (of apoha)”.

Yoshimizu

tavaiva [Mādhava] tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyā- nantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvā- darśanena tadvyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>.

tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

NB: yathā connected with what precedes, since it is part of a larger quotation of Dignāga’s previous text. tathā out of the quote and disconnected.

The quote is found in Muni Jambuvijaya’s edition of the Jain Dvādaśāra Nayacakra:

yathāha dvādaśaśatikāyām: yad apy uktam aprasaktasya kimartham pratiṣedhaḥ iti naivaitat pratiṣedhamātram ucyate, kintu tasya vastunaḥ kaścid bhāgo ‘rthāntaranivṛttyā loke gamyate yathā viṣaṇitvād anaśva iti.

atra would thus mean, according to Yoshimizu, “here, in this treatise [like in the Dvādaśaśatikā, whence the quote come from]”. This would also explain why in the PS Dignāga did not need to dwell at length on componential analysis, because he could rely on what he had said already in the Dvādaśaśatikā.

What do you think? The yathā-tathā sequence seems appealing, all the more because a tasmāt separates the previous sentence from yathā, unlike in the reused text, but the reused text seems to point to a stricter relation between the yathā-clause and what precedes it.

These are only my reconstructions of Pind’s, Yoshimizu’s and Kataoka’s thought as represented in, respectively, Pind’s PhD thesis, Yoshimizu’s paper discussed here and Kataoka’s papers presented at the last IABS and IDhK conferences. All mistakes are mine. For the first part of my reconstruction, see here.

Kei Kataoka, Ole Holten Pind and Kiyotaka Yoshimizu have disagreed on how to reconstruct the sequence of opponents and siddhantin in PS 5. In the following, I will deal with 5.41–42 and I will only add some furhter questions to the ones they have listed already, in the vague hope that clear questions contribute more than dogmatic answers to the advancement of a discipline.

Let me start with PS 5.41ab. Here Dignaga has:

sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ.

Who is speaking here? To whom should this view be attributed?
Jinendrabuddhi starts his commentary with:

tatra hi vaibhā{g}ikenoktam (see below for the uncertainties concerning this reading)

Pind and Yoshimizu consequently attribute PS 5.41ab to a certain “Vaibhāgika”, whereas Kataoka attributes it to the Sāṅkhya Mādhava, who would there be rephrasing Dignāga’s view.
In favour of his view, Kataoka can point to the fact that the Tibetan translation of Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary does not have tatra hi vaibhāgikenoktam but rather translates *vaināśikena, which could refer to Mādhava’s fame of “destroyer” of the Sāṃkhya system. Furthermore, vaibhāgika would be an absolute hapax. Last, Kataoka kindly informed me (and the audience at the IDhK conference in Heidelberg) that the manuscript of the Sanskrit version of Jinendrabuddhi, which would be the only evidence in favour of vaibhāgikena, does not clearly confirm it.

Jinendrabuddhi then adds:

atra sāṅkhyena pratividhānam āha

This is a univocal reference to a Sāṅkhya author, possibly Mādhava. If Kataoka is right, both passages are then attributed to Mādhava, but the first one is a rephrasal of Dignāga by Mādhava, whereas the second is Mādhava’s critique to Dignāga.

Last should come Dignāga’s reply. But where does it exactly start?

PS 5.41–42 read as follow in Pind’s reconstruction:

sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ yo ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ |
so viruddho bhavanmatyā bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ || 41 ||
so ‘napekṣa ity etat tu svavikalpavirmitam |
nirapoham […] || 42 ||

Kataoka:
sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ: Mādhava
yo ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ so viruddho, bhavan[=Sāṅkhya]matyā, bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ: Dignāga. bhavanmatyā is not connected to viruddhaḥ and it means that the example has been only provisionally introduced from the point of view of Sāṅkhya. 41d is Dignāga’s authentic siddhānta, which follows in v.42.

Yoshimizu:
sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ: Vaibhāgika
so ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ so viruddho, bhavan[=Dignāga’s]matyā: Mādhava’s criticism of Dignāga
bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ: Mādhava
Yoshimizu thus stresses the importance of the tu as indicating a change of speaker.
v. 42: Dignāga. Again, the tu is stressed as the key element to understand that a new discussant is now speaking.

If Kataoka is right, Dignāga only provisionally accepted that one grasps a cow by means of dew-lap etc., whereas in fact he never moved from the absolute exclusive/negative nature of the apoha theory, which does not admit any positive entity, be it a cow or a dew-lap.

If Yoshimizu (or Pind, since if I am not wrong their views tend to be quite close) is right, Dignaga does indeed accept that one grasps a cow by means of a dewlap, etc. (Yoshimizu suggested in his 2011 article discussed here that this implies a componential analysis and not the real existence of dew-lap, etc.).

These are only my reconstructions of Pind’s, Yoshimizu’s and Kataoka’s thought as represented in, respectively, Pind’s PhD thesis, Yoshimizu’s paper discussed here and Kataoka’s papers presented at the last IABS and IDhK conferences. All mistakes are mine.

K. Yoshimizu shows passages of the Mahābhāṣya showing that the denotation of gauḥ is described as involving various elements, such as dewlap, horns, hooves, humpback. According to Yoshimizu, Dignāga maintains that in actual usage language users acknowledge the presence of this elements in order to recognise what is a cow (and their absence in order to recognise what is a non-cow). Yoshimizu says that is process is akin to what contemporary linguists call “componential analysis”. He quotes passages from Dignāga’s PS which apply it even to proper names (since also “Ḍitta” describes a set of qualities, such as being adulterine, having one-eye only, etc.).

Componential analysis cannot work, by contrast, for the “founder” of Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (who knew Dignāga and criticised his work), since he maintains that the universal “cowness” is directly perceivable and that this is what allows us to recognise a cow before we recognise its dewlap, etc. In this sense, the meaning of a word denotes, for Kumārila, a universal, and can only secondarily be analysed in its sense-components.

This leads Yoshimizu to a further question, namely, how can one perform an injunction, if this referes to a universal? One would never be able to bring either the universal cowness, nor all its instantiations (i.e., all cows) once one has been enjoined to “Bring the cow!”. Fortunately enough, the word “cow” in such a command refers to all individual cows, but one by one (so Kumārila in the TV). How is this possible? Because Kumārila distinguishes two elements in each prescription (what is uddeśyamāna and what is upādīyamāna*), which Yoshimizu equates to what contemporary linguists call “topic” and “comment”. The “comment” adds new information, whereas the “topic” is what we know already about. This part is only needed in order to understand what the comment is about. For instance: “cow” is “comment” and then “topic” in the next two sentences (the example is mine, no responsibility of Yoshimizu in any mistake it may contain):

“That one is my cow” (topic: “That one” (you already know about it since a gesture indicates it); comment: “my cow” (you did not know before the speaker had a cow))

“Bring the cow” (topic: “the cow” (you already know that the speaker has a cow, and which one it is); comment: “Bring [it]!”)

Once the “cow” is made into a “topic”, one knows already its number (in this case, singular) and can identify it easily. Thus, one does no longer need to bring all possible cows sharing the universal “cowness”.

Yoshimizu’s conclusion is that Kumārila leans towards pragmatics (for instance, he implements a topic-comment distinction which takes into account the pragmatic presuppositions implied in a certain linguistic act), whereas Dignāga implicitly presupposes some type of componential analysis.

A dewlap is not always sufficient as a probans to infer a cow

What do you think of the application of contemporary theories to classical Indian philosophy? Do they help or bewilder you?

More on Kataoka’s view of apoha can be read here If you are in Vienna and you want to discuss these topics with Yoshimizu, consider attending this workshop.

*On “topic” and “comment” applied to Mīmāṃsā linguistics one can also read Yoshimizu 2006, where the “comment” is equated to the vidheya

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.

The paper elaborates on Yoshimizu 2007 (Festschrift Steinkellner), in which Yoshimizu discussed Kumārila’s view of the foundation of the validity of inference on the basis of a fragment from the Bṛhaṭṭīkā, of which only quotations in later texts are extant. Frauwallner (1962) had used the same fragment to prove that Kumārila had modified his view on inference from his younger work (the Ślokavārttika) to his later Bṛhaṭṭīkā, which was influenced by Dharmakīrti. Thus, Frauwallner suggested that the Bṛhaṭṭīkā must have been a later work by Kumārila and proposed the following sequence:

1. Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika, which shows acquaintance of Dignāga, but not of Dharmakīrti, and grounds inference on avinābhāva or vyāpti, invariable concomitance
2. Dharmakīrti’s logical work called Hetuprakaraṇa, showing that the sheer concomitance (avinābhāva) is not enough and one needs to ground inference on an ontologically given vyāpti, which he called niyama
3. Kumārila’s Bṛhaṭṭīkā, embracing niyama

niyama has an advantage over avinābhāva insofar as it includes a uni-directional relation (from the effect to the cause) and an enhanced degree of certainty, since it is based on ontology (in Dharmakīrti’s works: on either causality or identity, Yoshimizu stresses the fact that Kumārila does not embrace this partition).

Further, Yoshimizu, in contrast to Frauwallner, contends that the position found in the Bṛhaṭṭīkā represents an inner development of Kumārila’s position, in which he reaches a definition of valid inference autonomous from Dignāga’s. In the paper he will read in Heidelberg, Yoshimizu substantiates this claim through quotes from Kumārila’s intermediate work, namely the Tantravārttika, in which the term niyama is discussed within Mīmāṃsā contexts. This shows, Yoshimizu maintains, that the Bṛhaṭṭīkā fragment on niyama was the result of an inner development of Kumārila’s thought. This leads Yoshimizu to a final, interesting remark, namely that Kumārila was quite strict as for the validity of the Veda in its exclusive domain, namely dharma. However, he never went further to say that the Veda was the only means of knowledge, thus banning human reasoning altogether.

If Yoshimizu is right, should we imagine that Dharmakīrti has been influenced by Kumārila also in regard to the concept (and the terminology) of niyama?

These are just my thoughts on Yoshimizu’s paper. All mistakes are entirely mine. For my summaries of the IABS, see this post. For further posts on Kiyotaka Yoshimizu, see here.