________________
Reviews of Books
since the line says nothing more than that the Yogin has seen. that is understood, the self to be the object of the satkayadṛṣṭi. 340.13-15: Elaborating upon the verse just quoted Candrakirti establishes a logical sequence-expressed by means of repeating the present participle (sam-)anupasyan-to clarify the motivation for the Yogin's investigation of the self: 1. discernment of samsara as being based in the satkāyadṛṣṭi. 2. discernment of the self as the objective basis of this drști, 3. discernment of a) abandonment of this drsti through nonperception of the self, and b) disappearance of afflictions through abandonment of this drști. Sprung translates: "... the yogi, through not taking the self as real, abandons the view that the person is real, and having abandoned this view, discerning that all the basic afflictions come to an end, he inquires into the self." In other words Sprung divides the sentence and thus the Yogin's activity into two parts: first the Yogin is "discerning" (steps 1 and 2 above), but then he is discerning step 3.b) through acting out step 3.a). This leaves us to ask why the Yogin continues to investigate the self when he already has begun with "not taking the self as real" and thereby has abondoned the dṛṣṭi. Here, as above, Sprung falls into the trap of his own understanding of anupalambha ("not taking as real") as an intentional approach towards its object, the self, and distorts a logically and grammatically clear
statement.
341.1: Introducing kärikä 1 Candrakirti wishes to explain why Nagarjuna here deals only with the alternatives of identity and difference and gives two reasons: the three other relevant theses are implied in the two, and he wants to be brief. The whole meaning of Candrakirti's remark is lost, however, when Sprung translates "Because the other theses... are implicit....and.... Nāgārjuna..... refutes both views: that of identity and that of difference." Thus a new verb is substituted, the instrumental of pratisedhena neglected, the verb äha and the crucial word eva that carries the purpose of the whole statement are left untranslated.... pakṣadvavapratisedhenaiva...aha should in fact be rendered as "N.... only by refuting these two views... says:", since only then we can understand the purpose of the two reasons given (cf. Sprung's rendering of 341.5-7).
341.8: tatra does not refer to "this (kärikā)" but to "these (two views)."
342.2f.: Sprung's translation of upādāna "what it (= the self) possesses." "the possessed" and upādātā "the possessor" is determined by the thesis "the self possesses the skandhas" (tadvat 341,1). It is not only inaccurate, but also inconsistent, since on p. 141 Sprung translates "what is appropriated." etc.. as is usual (cf. the glossary).
342.7: The second part of Madhyamakāvatāra VI 127 quoted here is misunderstood, although de La Vallée Poussin's translation of the verse and the commentary is quite clear (cf. p. 292ff.). Instead of "If the self were like a real object, it could not, as such, have contradictory states" it says in fact
413
"Moreover the self would be something real; and if (the view that the person is real) would refer to such a reality, it would not be erroneous." For the difficult reading tadṛśas cf. de La Vallée Poussin's note 3 on p. 292.
343.8: atha vayam anyo rthah introduces the second explanation of kärikä lcd, i.e., "another meaning." not with Sprung "another argument."
343.9: Since he neglects the word. laksana-, at the end of the compound Sprung presents what he notes to be "an interesting statement of the five skandhas": "The five factors of personal existence are (1) bodily form. (2) experiencing. (3) seizing on the specific character of things. (4) shaping one's dispositions, (5) becoming aware of objects." In fact the five terms are not an interesting statement of the skandhas, but rather a quite ordinary statement of the well-known characters or definitory marks (laksana) of the skand has. The beginning, therefore. should be "The five factors of personal existence have the following characters." Having mistaken the definitory features for the defined, Sprung continues to bend the words. rūpaṇa is taken as rupa ("bodily form"), while in fact it is "the faculty of being broken," since the word for the skandha rūpa is etymologically derived from rup-, not from rup-; likewise mistaken are the fourth and the fifth of Sprung's "skandhas" (cf. note 7 on p. 343 of the text and de Jong's note 14 for more details).
345,16: tadaisam does not mean "For such,...", but "Thus, for those...". i.e., for those aspiring for freedom.
These examples will suffice to show that Sprung's translation in general is not very successful in meeting his own standards. The reader will be puzzled by the inconsistencies in translating a number of common, technical terms, by breaks and irregularities in the logical sequence of arguments, and by meaningless words and formulations. None of these flaws can be found in the original. They are due to the translator's carelessness in redacting his translation and in observing the grammatical and logical structures of the original. Especially distressing is the fact, that most of these flaws could have been avoided if only Sprung would have taken pains to utilize the works of his predecessors. He states that they have been of help (VII), but I fail to see how.
Careless editing of the Sanskrit terms added throughout the book (even of those in the Glossary) is another indication of a loose relationship to the original. The uncomely forms which result include for example: pratyayata matrena for idampratyayatāmātrena (p.49), drasta for drasta or drastṛ (p. 93 and passim) Sprung follows no rule in using either the nominative singular or the noun-stem in his terms, svarsipataḥ for svarupataḥ (p. 168). Or from the Glossary: utccheda for uccheda, grahana for grahana, trsna for trsna, nișidha for nişedha, pramāna for pramāna, hhad for badha (?), sākṣād for säkṣät, sahabhava for sahabhava, samvṛtya (explained as "adjective to samvrti") for samvṛtva (instrumental of samyṛti). Finally as if to demonstrate the dangers of translating words
