Indian Antiquary Vol 62

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

Page 267

DECEMBER, 1933]
BOOK NOTICES
BOOK-NOTICES.
BUDDHIST LOGIC: By TH. STCHERBATSKY, Vol. I. Bibliotheca Buddhica, XXVI. pp. xii+ 560. Academy of Sciences of the United Soviet Republics; Leningrad, 1932.
It was my privilege in the September number to review the second volume of this work, containing the translation of the Nyáyabindu and other passages in Indian treatises on logic, which provide the basis for the exposition of the system in this volume; and through the courtesy of the author the latter has been received in time for me to review it. But circumstances beyond my control debar me from attempting adequate appreciation of an epochmaking book, whose theories will be the subject of discussion for many years to come. The labour of a lifetime by a scholar of the first rank in that department of Sanskrit literature, which of all others is the most difficult to comprehend and which has moreover not yet been fully explored, is summed up here and is not to be pronounced on lightly. All I can do is to emphasize a few of the aspects which appear to me specially deserving of attention.
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First let no one be put off by the title, thinking that a book on logic must of necessity be dry and repellent. For Professor Steherbatsky looks on it as a subject of the greatest importance and succeeds in communicating to his readers the thrill he himself experiences in its study. This I would attribute only secondarily to a gift for setting out his views cogently and attractively, and primarily rather to prolonged hard thought which has enabled him to unravel the leading principles from a mass of tangled comment, and to his knowledge of Greek and modern European thought by which he illuminates his subject with striking comparisons. The method is unquestionably beset with pitfalls. For under the rules governing Indian philosophi cal discussions the fundamental ideas are often not explicitly brought to daylight are bofogged by the use of terms which can be interpreted in more ways than one, so that, as we know from many examples, comparison with European systems may guide us to wrong conclusions. Such a chargo has at times been laid at the author's door with some degree of justification, but, just as ho avoided tendenciousness on the whole in translating the Nydyabindu, so here he shows himself conscious of this danger by indicating points of difference as well as of likeness, and only in occasional passages would I suspect him of reading into his philosophers a meaning they did not intend. The parallels indeed are worked out with such critical acumen, that his book may well exert considerable influence on European thought. For if we accept his views, we must look on Buddhist logic as one of the most original products of the Indian mind, or even as the most original. Dinnâga was, however, too much in advance of his times to make his basic principles generally acceptable to his contemporaries and succeeding generations, and thus it came about that his work has influenced the details of orthodox Indian logic to a greater degree than the lay-out of the system.
The treatment adopted by Professor Stcherbatsky is suited to Buddhist logic in a way that it would not have been to the more involved thinking of the
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Nyaya-vaiseṣika system. The difference between the two, as he rightly emphasises, ultimately derives from the attention paid by the Buddhists to epistemology. As they took up detailed study of those subjects only which had a well-defined bearing on their beliefs, we must assume that the reason for this is to be sought in the philosophy of their religion. To have accepted the realist views of the Nyaya would have been fatal to their doctrines, and by demonstrating that knowledge expressible in words, whether derived from perception or inference had behind it only the authority of our imagination and did not necessarily correspond to any external reality, they made ready the path for Mahâyâna dogmatics. That logic was applicable only to the samerti plane of knowledge was thus no objection to its practice; na hi sam vrtisopánam antarena tattvaprásádasikharárohanam vipascitaḥ, as they were accustomed to say. Except where this principle of the two planes of knowledge is insufficiently recognised by the author, his arguments seem to me to be in the main conclusive. His explanation of the Buddhist theories on the perceptual judgment, inference and syllogism is novel, illuminating and convincing, epithets which apply equally to his description of their views of negation and relations. Nowhere else for instance are the exact implication of the trairûpya of the middle term so clearly brought out.
But is he really right about the nirvikalpaka form of pratyaksa? The object of perception is stated by Dharmakîrti and Dharmottara to be svalakṣaṇa, and the perception itself is necessarily limited to a point-instant, a kṣana; it is inexpressible in words and conveys meroly an impression of the senses, before the imagination starts to interpret the pratibhása, the image which the sense concerned imprints on that one of the five sensory consciousnesses which is related to it. It is this first instant of perception which alone is effective as being devoid of the aid of the imagination; its action is denoted by the indefinite word, arthakriyd, which is sometimes explained as paramarthasat. The term svalaksana is here translated by the Thing-in-itself, an unfortunate use of a Kantian term, which inevitably brings in associations foreign to Buddhist conceptions; and, basing his exposition on the late Tattvasamgraha (a work, of which we urgently require a good translation), the author concludes that these logicians looked on this part of perception as attaining ultimate reality. Some justification might be seen for this in the fact that the word nirvikalpaka applies also to knowledge that has reached the stage of omniscience, but it is quite certain that Dinnaga accepted the Mahâyâna doctrine of dharmanairátmya, prevalent in his day, according to which the analysis of phenomena into point-instants and dharmas was true for the samurti only and did not represent ultimate reality. In the Nydyamukha (tr. Tucci, 50) he opposes the admánya cognised by inference to the svalaksana apprehended by perception, and the lakṣaṇa, we are told (ib., 53), consists of many dharmas. This reminds me of Aávaghosa's phrase (Saundarananda, xvi, 48) that the elements must be considered sámányataḥ svena ca lakṣaṇena, "with respect to their general and