Alamban Pariksha

Author(s): Dinnaga, Dharmapala, N Aiyaswami Shastri
Publisher: Adyar Library

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are also met with in the works of Udyotakara, (Nyayavārtika), Vācaspatimis'ra (N. tatparyațīka) and Sālīkanātha (Prakaranapañcika) and others. I, therefore, need not say how thought-provoking and epoch-making the treatise was in those days. Their arguments and counterarguments will be more understandable, if one could get acquainted with the present work. Further, the work, as it is stated, forms one of the author's original contributions to the logic-minded Yogācāra school of Buddhism. All these circumstances necessitate us to undertake the publication of the present treatise.
It is most unfortunate that such an important work should have been lost to us in its original Sanskrit, though available in translations of foreign languages, Chinese and Tibetan. The work has two commentaries, one by Dharmapāla of Nālandā, preserved in Chinese version of I-tsing, and the other by Vinītadeva available in Tibetan version. Mr. Susumu Yamaguchi in collaboration with H. Meyer has translated into French and published in the Journal Asiatique T. CCXIV, (Jan.March, 1929) this work with copious extracts from the commentary of Vinītadeva, and also edited the Tibetan and Chinese versions of the text. But he did not study systematically the commentary of Dharmapāla. I have restored into Sanskrit this important treatise, text with author's own vịtti from the Tibetan version (Tang. hgyur. vol. Ge, XCV), with the commentary of Dharmapāla from the Chinese version of I-tsing, A.D. 671-695 (Nanjio, No. 1174, Taisho ed. vol. 31, No. 1625) and also translated them all into English. Dharmapāla's