Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 191

SEPTEMBER, 1933]
BOOK-NOTICES
179
he has been accustomed to do. The Nyayabindu referring to these passages is that Dharmakirti and and its commontary is straightforward enough in his commentator use ordinarily and of set purpose appearance, but the exact significance of each term vocabulary which would enable their theories to be and argument is singularly difficult to grasp in its professed either by realist or by idealist Buddhists. entirety and still more difficult, when graspod, to
Each party could put their own construction on the render accurately and intelligibly. Yet here an language without impairing the force of the arguextraordinary measure of success has been attained;
ments, but I would hold that in certain cases the for this is undoubtedly far and away the best actual method used in the translation to force tha translation of any Sanskrit work on logic that we views of one party, the idealists, into the toxt is have, & veritable tour de force, when we remember open to criticism as befogging the issues and that that English is not the author's native language
more straightforward rendering would have been and that complete mastery of its idiomatic peculiari
more accurate and more comprehensible. tieg is indispensable for & precise reproduction of
This may be illustrated by a point to which the subtletios of the original. Even if occasionally
more competent hand than mine (La Vallée Poussin, there are lapses in grammar, they are no hindrance
Maanges chinois et bouddhiques, vol. I, 415) has to understanding and an Englishman is the best
drawn attention, Professor Steherbatsky's transla. person to bear witness to the high quality of the
tion of serpya by 'co-ordination with the impli. achievoment. Much of the success, it should bo
cations he draws therefrom. The term is confined added, attained in making Dharmakirti's and Dhar.
almost entirely in this work to perception. This mottara's position comprehensible is due to the
latter is divided into two distinct stages, firstly the admirable notes, which bring out clearly the impor
action of the sense organ, which rosults in an exact tance and originality of Buddhist logic by means of
reflection of the objoct, always hore called pratibhd sa comparisons with modern German and English work
and secondly, the action of kalpand, the constructiva in this domain.
imagination, which constructs an image out of the In the absence of the first volume a discussion of
reflection. This image is regularly called ábhain gonoral principles would be out of placo, but in by which is indicatod a lack of oxact noss or reality, reviewing a book which will be read with the closest its nature as a product of imagination : in the ono attention by spocialists and which may be earnestly | passage (text, p. 8, 2) whore avabhidea is substituted recommended to all students starting on the study for it the ta is probably interpolatod, so that we of Indian logie, it is not otiose to indicate one or should read drthabhásd. In the text, p. 15, 8 ff.. two points to which with diflidence I am inclined to the image is described as the shape (dkdra) that the tako exception with diffidence, not merely because mind takes and thereby through the likeness (sdrúp. it is a case of impar congressus, but also because in ya) to the object the cognition of the object is some casos disagreement may be due not to diffor completed (arthapratitisiddhi): 'co-ordination fails encos on matters of substance but to the failure of to express adequately this process, whose original the translation to give exact offeet to the intentions purpose was to explain how cognition took place oi Professor Stcherbatsky. I notice he is reluctant without actual contact between the mind, the sense to admit that artha usually means simply the object organ and the object. Incidentally the theory of to which pratyaksa is directed, without any philo. the reflection of the object cannot but strike one sophical implications as to the nature or reality of as possessing remarkable analogies with the classical the object; for instance text, p. 7, 12-13, is correctly Sâmkhya theory of the action of citi in the puruşa. given literally in a footnote, but the construction A minor matter is the translation of mátsvivdha. put upon it in the translation seems to me to go kramopadesavat (text, p. 2, 24) by '<that its aim too far. Again in toxt. p. 6, 5 and 8, the two was undesirable, > like the instruction about the occurrences of ekdrthasamaritam, which means some ritual to be followed at the (re)-marriage ceremony thing like 'associated with & single object,' is of one's own) mother'. Whether krama can mean translatod the first time 'as its implication,' and ritual I need not discuss, but why 'one's own the second time 'inherent in the same object,' so mother'? There are two alternatives, either by putting a wrong complexion on the whole passage.taking máts as equivalent to mátrgráma, a common Similarly the long and important discussion of Buddhist term for women generally, and undernegation in the chapter on svarthánumána is very standing that widow marriage is entirely disapproved hard to follow, because a number of different trans- of, or, in view of the fact that the Kamasutra's lations are tried for dréya and adsdya, in order to section on the punarbhú proves the second marriages import the idea, which is quite irrelevant to Dhar. of women not to be uncommon or to be considered mottara's argument, that to a Vijñânavadin drøya objectionable in certain circumstances, by translat. means, not something real, but something imagined. ing mait as one who has borne children to her first When the author finally abandons the attempt and husband and inferring that remarriage was im. Bettles down to the equivalent sensibilia,' he be proper in such cases only. comes intelligible again and gives us the precise But, taken all round, the translation is remarkably offect of the text. The point I would make in successful for its accurate reproduction of the