REMEMBERING DHARMAKITRI
(c) Copyright of Prabuddha Biswas
1. THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER SCHOLAR OF 600-700 AD NALANDA MAHAVIHARA
2. DHARMAKIRTI MARKS THE HIGHEST WATER MARK IN ‘INDIAN LOGIC’ THROUGH ITS PROGRESS FROM 2ND CENTURY AD TO 15TH CENTURY
3. HIS THEORIES BECAME STANDARD IN TIBET AND ARE STUDIED TO THIS DAY AS A PART OF THE BASIC MONASTIC CURRICULUM.
4. DHARMAKIRTI’S GREATEST WORK, ‘PRAMANAVARTIKA’ PROVIDED THE BASIS FOR OTHER SCHOLARS TO FOLLOW HIM FOR SEVERAL CENTURIES
5. SHANKARYACHARYA’S TREATISE ON THE IDEALIST ADVAITA PHILOSOPHY WAS BUILD UP ON THE BASIS OF DHARMAKIRT’S TREATISE OF NALANDA SCHOOL.
BRIEF LIFE SKETCH OF DHARMAKIRTI – THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER-SCHOLAR OF 600-700 A. D. NALANDA MAHAVIHARA
1. Dharmakīrti (6th or 7th Century A.D.) was a Buddhist scholar from South India.
2. He was one of the key scholars of philosophical logic in Buddhism, and is associated with its Yogacara school.
3. He was one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism.
4. His works particularly influenced the scholars of Mimamsa, Nyaya and Shaivism schools of Hinduism as well as scholars of Jainism, and they remain part of modern era studies in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet.
HISTORY
1. Little is known for certain about the life of Dharmakirti.
2. Tibetan hagiographies suggest he was a Brahmin born in South India,[7] studied under Isvarasena, belonged to the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, left Mimamsa and moved to Nalanda where he interacted with 6th century Dharmapala.
3. However, the accuracy of the Tibetan hagiographies is uncertain, and scholars place him in the 7th-century instead.
4. This is because of inconsistencies in different Tibetan and Chinese texts, and because it is around the middle of 7th-century, and thereafter, those Indian texts begin discussing his ideas, such as the citation of Dharmakirti verses in the works of Adi Shankara.
5. Dharmakīrti is placed by most scholars to have lived during 600–660 CE, but a few place him earlier.
6. Dharmakirti is credited with building upon the work of Dignāga, the pioneer of Buddhist logic, and Dharmakirti has ever since been influential in the Buddhist tradition.
7. His theories became normative (standard) in Tibet and are studied to this day as a part of the basic monastic curriculum.
8. Dharmakirti worked at Nalanda as a lay Buddhist, not as an ordained monk, and his work reflects his belief that no one will understand the value of his work, his efforts soon forgotten.
9. History proved his fears wrong and Dharmakirti’s thoughts and philosophical postulations has been marked as the HIGHEST WATER MARK IN INDIAN LOGIC.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A. THE YOGACHARA (OR YOGACARA) SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY
The Yogācāra, along with the MadhyamIka, is one of the two principal philosophical schools of Indian Mahayana Buddhism.
Yogachara (IAST: Yogācāra; literally "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga")[1] is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and ontology[2] through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It was associated with Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE, but also included non-Mahayana practitioners of the Dārṣṭāntika school.
Yogācāra discourse explains how our human experience is constructed by the mind.
B. MADHYAMIKA SCHOOL OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM AND ITS FOUNDER
1. Nagarjuna, (flourished 2nd century A. D.) Indian Buddhist philosopher who articulated the doctrine of emptiness (shunyata).
2. He is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Madhyamika (“Middle Way”) school, an important tradition of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy.
C. THE PROGRESS OF YOGACHARA SCHOOL BY-PASSING MADHYAMIKA SCHOOL OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM
1. According to Tom Tillemans, the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti ideas constitute a nominalist philosophy and they disagree with the Madhyamaka philosophy, by asserting that some entities are real.
2. Dharmakirti states that the real is only the momentarily existing particular (svalakṣaṇa), and any universal (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) is unreal and fiction. The ideas of Dharmakīrti represent the Yogācāra idealism.
D. HISTORICAL PROGRESS OF YOGACHARA SCHOOL FROM 6TH CENTURY AD TO 12TH CENTURY AD
The Buddhist works such as the Bodhisattva-bhūmi and the Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṅkāra composed before the 6th century A. D., on hetuvidyā (logic, dialectics) are unsystematic, whose approach and structure are heresiological, proselytical and apologetic.[4]
1. Their aims were to defeat non-Buddhist opponents (Brahmanical Religion, Jainism, Ajivikas, others), defend the ideas of Buddhism, develop a line of arguments that monks can use to convert those who doubt Buddhism and to strengthen the faith of Buddhists who begin to develop doubts.
2. Around the middle of the 6th century, possibly to address the polemics of non-Buddhist traditions with their pramana foundations, the Buddhist scholar Dignāga shifted the emphasis from dialectics to more systematic epistemology and logic, retaining the heresiological and apologetic focus.
3. Dharmakīrti followed in Dignāga footsteps, and is credited with systematic philosophical doctrines on Buddhist epistemology, which Vincent Eltschinger states, has "a full-fledged positive/direct apologetic commitment".
E. ADVENT OF ADVAITA PHILOSOPHY OF ADI-SHANKARA FROM 700 A.D.
1. Shankara developed it’s ‘Idealist Advaita philosophy’ by opposing and countering
(i) The dominant Idealist philosophical school of the time, i.e.; Yogachara School MAHAYANA BUDDHISM of Dignaga-Dharmakirti OF 600-700 AD and
(ii) The ‘weakened (yet pursuing)’ philosophy of Nagarjuna’s ‘Madhyamika School of Mahayana Buddhism’.
2. From 600 AD to 1200 AD, slowly, the Yogachara School got detached from the masses and they also lost the credibility with the contemporary World due to their alien ‘day to day approaches’ based on their philosophical postulations.
3. On the other hand, the Idealist Advaita School under Adi-Shankaracharya started its march from 700 AD.
4. But Indian philosophy was increasingly absorbed into disputes on behalf of particularistic theological positions.
5. Nevertheless, down through the 1300s at least, intellectual competition among the schools (Shaiva and Vaishnavite Bhakti cult) remains sharp as for e.g. Shakaracharya, Ramanujcharya, Madhavacharya, Nimbarkcharya among others
6. For a while the shift towards sectarianism acts as a series of shocks to the external base, stimulating philosophical creativity.
7. If we take pain to seek it out beneath the philosophical trappings, we find in this period the mature phase of Indian philosophy, its highest level of acuteness of the epistemology-metaphysics sequence.
‘POSITIONING’ OF DHARMAKIRTI IN THE INDIAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION
1. But if we ponder on the sequence of events, we will find that DHARMAKIRTI was the highest water mark of ‘Indian Logic’ in its progress from 2nd Century AD to 15 the Century AD.
2. The environment of University life provided the platform for the highest intellectual minds of the time and ‘NALAND MAHAVIHARA’ provided that opportunity to DHARMAKIRTI and other intellectuals of the time.
3. Dharmakirti’s treatise ‘PRAMANAVARTIKA provided the basis for other scholars to follow him for several hundred of years.
4. Adi Shankara’s treatise on the ‘Idealist Advaita Philosophy’ was also formulated on the basis of Dharmakirt’s treatise of Nalanda School
5. Shankar’s treatise also found its initial opponent from the region of Bihar...only i.e. in Mithila.
WRITINGS
Dharmakirti is credited with the following major works:
1. Saṃbandhaparikṣhāvrtti (Analysis of Relations)
2. Pramāṇaviniścaya (Ascertainment of Valid Cognition)
3. Pramāṇavārttikakārika (Commentary on Dignaga's 'Compendium of Valid Cognition')
4. Nyāyabinduprakaraṇa (Drop of Reasoning)
5. Hetubindunāmaprakaraṇa (Drop of Reasons)
6. Saṃtānāntarasiddhināmaprakaraṇa (Proof of Others' Continuums)
7. Vādanyāyanāmaprakaraṇa (Reasoning for Debate)
Dharmakirti’s greatest work PRAMANAVARTIKA was lost but it was recovered from Tibet by Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan. He also recovered his other books. Now books and treatise are available with the Bihar Research Society (Patna Museum Campus).
PHOTOGRAPHS
1. Dharmakirti
2. Nalanda Mahavihara
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