Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 648

118
YAMUNA KACHRU
MCDERMOTT, A. C. Senape (ed.). An Eleventh-century Buddhist logic
of 'exists': Ratnakiriti's Ksanabhangasiddhiḥ vyatirekãtmikā. With Introduction, English translation and Notes. Foundations of language supplementary Series, 11. Dordrecht, Netherlands : Reidel, 1969. X + 88 pp.
Reviewed by M. A. MEHENDALE, Deccan College, Poona
The book under review contains a Romanized transliterated text, which is principally the same as found in Ra!nakitlinibandhāvaii (ed. by A. Thakur, Patna, 1957). Minor corrections and deviations from this text have been indicated in the foot notes. In the Introduction, the editor gives information about the author and his philosophy and attempts a comparison of Ratnakirti with other 'flux' philosophers of the west. It would not be possible to understand the text with the help of the editor's translation alone. She has therefore added very useful notes to explain the logical and epistemological problems dealt with in this text.
Ratnakirti, the Buddhist philosopher of the early 11th century A.D., flourished at the University of Vikramaśīlā. He was a member of the Yogācāra-Vijñänavāda school of late Buddhist philosophy. Within this tradition, Ratnakirti belonged to the sub-school of interpretation of Dharmakirti's (7th century A.D.) Pramānavārttika which is "a highly original recasting of the basic tenets of the great Buddhist logician Dignāga (ca. 480 A.D.) into a system of logic and epistemology which became the point of departure for all subsequent developments in Buddhist logic (p. 2, fn. 8). Ratnakirti defends the theory of nonmomentary reality which is expressed in terms "whatever exists is momentary" (yat sat tat kşanikam). The anvaya version of this theory has been established by Ratnakirti in his Kşanabhangasiddhih anvayatmika. What he does in the present book is to establish the contrapositive of it, viz., "whatever is nonmomentary does not exist". Received 22 June 1970 ]
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