Logic Of Svabhavahetu In Dhharmakirtis Vadanyaya

Author(s): Ernat Steinkellner
Publisher: Ernat Steinkellner

Page 13

The Logic of the svabhavahetu in Dharmakirti's Vadanyaya 323 the end of his work Dharmakirti proposed a new and generally valid method, one that was no longer flawed by a different treatment of the same kind of reason. What is still to be investigated is the question of whether the different treatments of the svabhavahetu and the karyahetu in this respect were not also resolved in a certain sense in order to design a homogeneous logical system, or at least, whether there are not indications to be found in Dharmakirti's work that he was aiming in this direction. At the beginning of this paper I referred to Frauwallner, who paved the path towards a historical interpretation of Dharmakirti's work. Let me now end this investigation by referring to another great scholar who has, in many important ways, promoted our knowledge of Dharmakirti's thought and tradition with his critical analysis of the theories and later polemics: Satkari Mookerjee. Satkari Mookerjee long ago recognized with reference to the sattvanumana that its treatment amounts to an acceptance of a theory of "internal concomitance" (antarvyapti), although he knew that it was not accepted in the Buddhist epistemological school except for the late Ratnakarasanti.1 Latero Mookerjee saw that this theory was a consequence of Dharmakirtis concept of the svabhavapratibandha as the real fundament of a logical relation: "The relation of antarvyapti is then a deduction from Dharmakirti's conception of natural concomitance (svabhavapratibandha)."63 Mookerjee also felt Dharmakirti's importance for the beginnings of the Jaina tradition of the antarvyapti-theory with Siddhasena Divakara.64 In the Nyayavatara this theory and the term for it is to be found - according to our present knowledge - in total isolation and without any Jaina background, but in Dharmakirti we can now say that this theory seems to be the final product of a life-long occupation with the problem of an ascertainment of the logical nexus at least in the case of the svabhavahetu. And although Dharmakirti did not himself refer to his new theory by the term antarvyapti, he can definitely be considered its creator.65 That his own tradition did not choose to follow these new lines of thought in a straightforward way but chose rather to interpret Dharmakirti with an emphasis on the Dignagean heritage, is another matter. But we can fully support the late Buddhist antarvyaptivadin Ratnakarasanti, who insists on Dharmakirti as the propounder of this theory, when he says that the acarya - whom I consider to be Dharmakirti - regards the example in the formulation of the saltvanumana merely as a concession to slowminded people, but not as logically necessary. 01 Cf. The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, (repr.) Delhi 1975: 380ff. (the first edition of this PhD-thesis 1932 appeared Calcutta 1935). 04 Cf. "A Critical and Comparative Study of Jaina Logic and Epistemology on the Basis of the Nyayavatara of Siddhasena Divakara", Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1, 1971 (1-143): 4-9. I would like to thank Prof. E. Mikogami of Ryokoku University, Kyoto, who called my attention to this work and sent me a copy. 63 ibid., 7. 64 ibid., 83f. W On Dharmakirti's authorship of this theory and on the somewhat enigmatic treatment of the sattvanumana in its logical structure by the later Buddhist logicians cf. the valuable observations and materials collected in Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, "Some Thoughts on Antanyapti, Bahinyapti, and Trairupya" (in Buddhist Logic and Epistemology (cf. above note 4) 89-105), which is in parts a reworking of his paper "Ratnakarasanti and Ratnakinti" (in Surabhi, Sreekrishna Sarma Felicitation Volume, Tirupati 1983, 131-140). Antanyaptisamarthana, in Sir Buddhist Nydya Tracts in Sanskrit, ed. Haraprasad Shastri, Calcutta 1910, 112,4-9. Cf. Mimaki (cited in note 16) p. 52.