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Dharmakīrti : The Advocate of . Bāhyārtha-Astitva-Vāda
Dr Sushma Singhvi
The Paper examines whether Dharmakirti was an advocate of Vijñāna-Vāda like his own teacher Dharma-pāla or a follower of the Šunya-vāda of Mādhyamikas. The four causes of perceptual cognition as propounded in the Nyāya-bindu by Dharmakirti have been well considered in order to substantiate his belonging to the school of BĀHYĀRTHA-ASTITVA-VĀDA-External objects existence. It is further established that although the Yogācāra school accepts only consciousness and not the existence of external objects, yet it does accept such an existence through implication or upacăra. The definition of valid - cognition as ‘Pramāņam avisamvādi-jñānam'given in Pramāņa-Värttika proves the above hypothesis because without accepting the existence of external objects the non in-consistency of object remains an impossibility. Dharmakīrti, in the Pramāņa vārtika, has spoken of svalkşaņa as parmārtha sat because of Artha-kriya-saktatva; this is also an additional proof. The attemps made by Indian tradition, to assess Dharmakirti as Mādhyamika, have not produced sufficient evidence to prove their point.
One of the reasons for Dharmakīrti's being follower of external object's existence may be his belonging to the Tīrha-mata and his deep knowledge of Vaiśeșika philosophy.
Inspite of the fact that Dharmakirti was desciple of Dharma-pāla, who advocated the Yogācāra system i.e. Vijñānavāda and therefore many scholars opined that Dharmakīrti was also a follower of Vijñānavāda as
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